Press Pause to Reflect

We Need to Talk

2010-06-30T10:20:00.000-04:00

You may have noticed that we've been less attentive of late. We just want you to know that it's not your fault. Our eyes aren't wandering to other projects because we don't like you. You're the best, you really are. In fact, you deserve better. I hope we can still be friends.

And who knows? Maybe we'll be back some day. It's possible. But let's not build up unrealistic expectations. Things change, people change. We're moving on. If we come back and you've found other blogs, we won't be angry. We hope you find happiness.

Thanks for all the memories. The archives will stay, but comments are closed.

Pole Dancers and Rappers and Models, Oh My!

2010-06-17T14:35:00.003-04:00

by C.T. Hutt

I won’t bother to question why many of the celebrities from the worlds of film and music were invited to E3. Any event with so many people in attendance deserves some live entertainment and I understand Mr. Eminem has written some exceptionally catchy tunes about his strained relationship with his mother. I’m okay with that.

And while I feel kicking off the big show with a scantily-dressed pole dance 75 feet in the air is not only a display of poor taste but further reinforces the stereotype that the gaming community is a horde of slathering undersexed man-babies, that is not my main issue with E3’s opening ceremony. My problem is that few of these people or performances have anything to do with video games and yet they‘ve received significantly wider press coverage at E3 than the actual individuals who work in the medium.

Why does the gaming industry feel the need to import celebrities from unrelated artistic ventures? Many people know who Rihanna is, but most gamers probably don’t recognize the name Marc Laidlaw, the lead writer who brought us the plots of Half Life and Half Life 2. The fault lies entirely with how developers see their talent and how those people are treated.

There are exceptions; Nintendo has put a significant amount of effort into promoting the work of Shigeru Miyamoto and as such his name and face are well known. But most major developers hide their writers, artists, and producers in the darkest cubicle farms they can find. This is mindless and short sighted. It’s one more example of developers cowing to the established conventions of popularity in a ham-fisted attempt to broaden the medium’s appeal. Video games don’t need Usher to solve their popularity problem.

For what it’s worth, here’s to the Marc Laidlaws, Kellee Santiagos, Dan Housers, and Tetsuya Nomuras of the world. You are the ones making video games great and you deserve all of the fanfare of E3 and events like it.

No Need to Explain

2010-06-07T16:30:00.002-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Alan Wake is the creator and the protagonist of the world he inhabits. Whether he is living through one of his own stories, dreaming, or insane, his personality informs every element of the narrative. After playing Remedy’s Max Payne games, I expected Wake to be more two-dimensional than he is. He is impatient and quick to anger with his wife but his devotion to her is clear. More interesting is the fact that his writing is riddled with clichés which are then reflected in the world he inhabits. In another context, I might call the Taken (shadowy figures controlled by darkness) poorly written, but Remedy has pulled a little trick to remove themselves from this criticism: They are Wake’s creation, so their cheesy design can only be blamed on him.

If this trick extended to other areas of the narrative it would become tiresome, but the rest of the plot is much more nuanced. Alan Wake leaves large sections of the story unexplained, but the absence feels intentional. Just like in the landscape of the game, there are patches of darkness left unexplored. Instead of distracting from the plot, this enhances it. The story veers between clarity and obfuscation, with large swathes of narrative open to interpretation and reconsideration. It isn’t entirely clear what happened in Alan Wake, and in a game with horror elements this works quite well. The object of fear stays out of the spotlight; some details are left to the audience.

The major problems with Alan Wake come from over explanation. There are a number of simple puzzles in the game, mostly relating to finding and turning on generators, and Alan is ready to explain exactly what the player should do if a moment is taken to linger. This is an interesting world that Remedy has created, so why are they urgently rushing the player through it? I want to look around and enjoy the view. I want to bask in the incredible lighting effects. Alan Wake’s failures are the concessions it has made to design conventions. Without the superfluous coffee thermoses and impatient hint system, there would be little to distract the player from a truly enthralling experience. Even the mini-map is unnecessary. The level design already shows the player where to go using light and darkness as guides.

The lesson to be taken away from the successes and failures of Alan Wake is that trusting the audience is a necessary part of the design process. Alan Wake trusts the player to fill in the blanks in the plot, but not the blanks in the gameplay. If the game sells well enough to spawn a sequel, I hope the creators learn to trust us (and their own design) even more.

Collect Everything

2010-06-04T10:29:00.002-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Collectible items have become standard fare in video games. If you haven’t collected all the flags in Assassin’s Creed or shot all the stars in Resident Evil 5, there’s still some meaningless task left to be accomplished. As irritating as those two examples are, however, it is possible to make collectible items a valuable part of the game experience.

Let’s talk about how:

1. They should be relevant to the narrative –In some way, shape or form, the collectible items being gathered should make sense in the game world and serve some narrative purpose. Alan Wake provides one excellent example of how to do this well: The pages from Wake’s manuscript, scattered around the world, offer details on the characters and situations in the game. Some of them are easy to find, some require thorough searching. Alan Wake also provides a terrible example of collectible items in the form of coffee thermoses. They’re irrelevant, out of place, and clearly just there for the achievement points.

2. They should serve some purpose other than achievement points – Any in-game item or activity which yields nothing but achievement points should be removed. They are distractions from the game. Again, one game gives an excellent example of how to do this well and how to do it poorly. The agility orbs in Crackdown were fun to find and yielded a clear benefit in the form of increased jumping ability. Once you’ve achieved the maximum height, however, they serve no further purpose. So why are there still so many left? At least the blast shards in inFAMOUS continued to be useful throughout the game, even if finding them was tedious and obnoxious.

3. They should be fun to collect – Obsessive collection alone is not fun. Jumping around in Crackdown is; that’s what makes the agility orbs worth seeking. If the actual act of finding hidden and collectible items is not interesting, why would collecting them be worthwhile? There are (many) reasons why Ocarina of Time is so well-respected. Hidden pieces of heart served a purpose and were usually hidden by interesting challenges and puzzles. Plus, they make you more powerful, which fulfills criteria number two.

4. It should be something worth collecting – People do collect rare bugs, and collecting rare golden bugs would be even more lucrative, so that’s a check mark for Twilight Princess. The bobbleheads in Fallout 3 are immensely collectible items; they even have their own collectible item stand. Mario collects stars, which is pretty weird, but he’s a weird guy. I believe it. Soldiers collect dog tags, sure. But seriously, no one collects identical coffee thermoses or identical flags or identical anything. At least make the items somewhat different from one another. The little statues in Assassin’s Creed 2 were approximately 300% more interesting than the feathers in the same game for that exact reason.

That’s it. It’s a short list. All you need to make a collection quest fun is that it be relevant, purposeful, fun, and worth collecting. It doesn’t seem like very much to ask, but another bad example hits the market every week. Let’s forget artificially-extended gameplay and stop breaking immersion. If every game followed these guidelines, collecting everything wouldn’t seem like such a waste of time.

Red Dead Refreshing

2010-06-02T14:48:00.003-04:00

by C.T. Hutt

In true Rockstar tradition, Red Dead Redemption is an open world free-for-all third person shooter with copious gunplay and significant adult themes. Instead of taking place in an urban jungle, Red Dead Redemption is set in 1911 in the untamed American South West. Gameplay-wise, aside from a great deal more cattle rustlin’, varmint shootin’, bronco wranglin’, and roamin’ across the open prairie, this title mimics many of the themes found in the much loved but highly controversial Grand Theft Auto series. Unlike GTA, Red Dead Redemption also incorporates a roleplaying element which allows the player to decide what type of range rider they wish to be. Rockstar has also made the collection side quests and achievement based rewards a seamless part of the game. These factors, combined with a vast array of interesting characters, a massive world to explore, and some of the best environmental graphics I have ever seen make this title a definite step in the right direction for Rockstar.

One of our biggest critiques of sandbox shooters in the past (such as The Saboteur and GTA4) is that in order to make progress in the game a player must act in a negative way. Even when the enemy is undeniably evil, civilian casualties are inevitable and in some cases part of the game. In Red Dead Redemption, a player can be as much of a devious bastard as they wish, riding into town on a jet black steed spraying the streets with gunfire and drinking all the whiskey in town, but they don’t have to. If a player is so inclined they can work with local law enforcement to bring down criminal organizations in the territory, save distressed citizens, and ride into the sunset on a white mare. Or you can do a little of both, kick down the doors of the local saloon, play cards all night, rob a bank before breakfast, and save the mayor’s daughter from being kidnapped before hopping on your motley horse and escaping into Mexico. Red Dead Redemption offers not only an open world, but an open character and story. This is done within the framework of an over-arching plot which is pretty interesting in itself. By allowing the narrative to be as personal an experience as the game play, Rockstar has added a fascinating element to its tried and true game structure.

Collection missions have been a long-standing pet peeve of mine. Nothing breaks immersion like a few lines of text telling you that collecting x number of y items is necessary to your cause. Red Dead Redemption features similar quests, but incorporates them into the over-arching game rather than having them exist as arbitrary challenges. For example: if you like to roam around the wilderness blasting critters and collecting their hides eventually your character will gain a reputation as a noted trapper. Townsfolk will start to recognize you for your expertise and you may even begin to start dressing the part. If instead you find yourself interested in the poker mini-game you can build up a reputation for being a champion gambler. Collection quests and mini-games are used to define your character rather than distract from the rest of the game. This is truly an ingenious change; it helps maintain immersion and gives players a motivation to complete side quests that makes sense in character.

Red Dead Redemption is hardly perfect; it relies heavily on combat to move the game along and the missions do tend to feel repetitive. Still, Rockstar has incorporated some elements into this title that the medium as a whole would do well to pay attention to. By allowing gamers to decide which type of character to play in addition to how we play the game, Rockstar is pushing the medium closer to truly open worlds.

Violence Is Not the Problem

2010-05-21T16:55:00.003-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Fair warning: the following post contains descriptions of brutal violence, as well as spoilers for God of War 3 and the movie Irreversible.

We return, time and time again, to the problem of violence in video games and other media. Does watching a gory movie make the viewer more comfortable with gore? Does murdering countless innocents in a fictional airport inspire real-life terrorism? Can a bit of the old ultraviolence permanently scar society?

When the media turns its gaze to the violence in video games, it is usually the acts themselves which are labeled as disturbing, gratuitous, and unfit for public consumption. What is most disturbing and potentially harmful, however, is the way that violence is treated by the individual characters in the games. Mostly it is not seriously considered by the characters at all. Enemies are merely there to be killed, and their deaths mean nothing. This may have been suitable in the time of Space Invaders or even Wolfenstein 3D, but as video game characters and graphics become more realistic, our response to violence must become more realistic as well.

Attempts at censorship in video games have frequently been misguided. Manhunt 2 was given an Adults-Only rating due to its extreme violence, but allowed to be published as a Mature-rated game after a filter was applied to the game’s brutal execution scenes. While these scenes were extreme in nature, perhaps the most disturbing element of the game remained: The player was rewarded for skill in the stealth portion of the game with more elaborate execution animations. A player who presses the attack button at the first opportunity might merely hold a bag over someone’s face until they die of suffocation, whereas a more skilled player who spends longer lurking in the shadows is treated to a more elaborate murder.

This element of rewarding players with gore is not new; a headshot in most shooters is considered a sign of skill, and usually results in an impressive spray of blood or an exploding skull. Extreme violence is even a selling point for franchises such as Gears of War and God of War. Despite their similar appellations, neither of these franchises have much to say about the nature of war and none of the protagonists seem affected by the things they do. Quite the opposite: Dom and Marcus congratulate one another on headshots and the creative use of chainsaw bayonets. These men should be riddled with PTSD and guilt; instead they joke and congratulate.

Visually speaking, the murder of Hercules in God of War 3 is one of the most gruesome acts of violence I have ever seen in a video game, being reminiscent of an infamous scene from the film Irreversible in which a man is murdered by repeated blows to the face with a fire extinguisher. Irreversible is a profoundly disturbing film, but this scene is not played for the enjoyment of the viewer; I have never met someone who finds violence of that caliber amusing, nor would I want to. The witnesses, both in the film and without, scream, run, and panic.

There is no such recognition of the horror of Kratos’s actions in God of War 3. Kratos is no longer a character by the third game; he is a monster worse than most of the foes he faces. Whatever sympathy was possible in the first game is completely obliterated by the third, in which he is singlehandedly responsible for the deaths of almost every living being on Earth. Make no mistake: Kratos is the villain of God of War 3, and there are no heroes. But still the character is glorified, and the violence with him.

While the destruction of Hercules’s face and skull is the most gratuitous act of violence in the game, the most disturbing is a simple moment in which Kratos allows an innocent woman to be torn to shreds by a machine simply because he needs to open a door. Do we really want our protagonists to be monsters like Kratos and Marcus, who think nothing of the violence they perpetrate?

Similarly, Nathan Drake of the Uncharted series would be one of the most likeable characters of all time if it were not for the fact that he is also a mass murderer.

I don’t think it is too much to ask for realistic characters in video games, and part of that is coming to terms with violence, shell shock, and post traumatic stress. There is a moment in the opening portion of Alan Wake where he mentions his fear that he may have just killed a man for the first time in his life, but it is merely narration. He doesn’t pause. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t sit and cry. Where are the characters who understand what they are doing? Where are the men and women who wonder whether their enemies had families or futures?

And yet here comes Bulletstorm, a game which promises to take itself even less seriously than most modern shooters and to reward players with points for particularly gruesome kills. How long can we fall back on the excuse that only unbalanced minds turn to violence as a result of video games? Are we ready to completely discount the idea that praising the player for causing violence might harm the psyche? Can we really put all of the blame on the parents? All of it?

If violent video games are damaging society, it is not with the level of gore or the realistic simulations of terrible acts. It is the uncaring gaze of the killers we call heroes that encourages the audience to take violence less seriously. Not every video game hero can be a role model, but shouldn’t most of them be better than this?

Addiction or Entertainment?

2010-05-18T14:55:00.003-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Some video games are designed to deliver a complete, finite experience. Sometimes these games deliver story and character arcs, other times merely a series of levels with little to no narrative coherency. These can vary in length, lasting anywhere from a few minutes to many hours, but at the end of that play time, the game is over.

Other games are designed to be played eternally. Even their so-called endings are frail veneers of finality. There is always something more to do. Games like The Sims, World of Warcraft, and Peggle are frequently referred to as “addictive,” which is not a quality one normally seeks out in a product. Still, these games hold a powerful allure. They demand a great deal from the player. A truly addictive single player or multiplayer game can eclipse all other games.

The first item in Blizzard’s mission statement is “gameplay first,” and one of the results is a long track record of incredibly well-implemented mechanics. Blizzard releases are overwhelmingly popular and their addictive properties are a matter of public record. Their games don’t really end. Their single player campaigns are lengthy and substantial, and when those are done, a rich multiplayer experience waits behind.

Some Blizzard games, like Diablo 2, don’t even require a multiplayer component to continue on into eternity. Even with only one character, multiple playthroughs are possible in the search for better and better loot and ever-increasing levels. I’ve lost what seemed like years of my life to that formula. Other games have come close to that level of addictive properties, a recent example being Borderlands, but few have reached the level of polish that Blizzard achieves.

I began playing Torchlight yesterday, and I can already feel its claws digging their way into my flesh. My Vanquisher just got an amazing bow and a second melee weapon worthy of dual-wielding. I have deep stacks of town portal and identify scrolls, and piles of healing and mana potions. I’m close to gaining another level. If I grab a little more gold, I can afford a great gem. I have a long list of quests in my journal. I’m having flashbacks to past addictions.

In high school and college, a few video games dominated large portions of my life. At boarding school, Starcraft consumed my study hall hours as I reveled in the fact that all the computers on campus were networked together. In my first year of college, in Montreal, I spent many an evening hunched over by the window, my mouse clicks spelling death to demons everywhere in Diablo 2. The persistent world community in Neverwinter Nights consumed days of my life after I moved to Greensboro.

I wish those games were finite, in retrospect. I consider a great deal of the time I spent with them wasted. Our leisure activities should not generate regret. It made me consider swearing off video games entirely, though I later learned a stronger sense of moderation coupled with a desire to limit myself to certain types of game experiences. I am far more productive than I once was. I have a good job, I started this blog, and I have close friendships and exciting artistic projects. My time to actually play video games is severely curtailed, but my life is more fulfilling as a result.

Though I enjoy playing Torchlight, Plants vs. Zombies, and similarly obsession-fueled games, I get very little satisfaction out of my time with them. The parallels to addiction are darker than we let on: Some games really do help us to shirk responsibility, encourage us to keep playing for just one more level, or call to us when we’re working on unrelated projects. I know that, personally, some video games have had negative impacts on my personal relationships, study habits, and effective use of free time.

Obviously it is my responsibility to monitor my own time and actions, but why do we hold games that can completely distract us from our lives in such high regard? I’ve come to prefer a well-made single player experience with a beginning and ending to an eternal grind. I’m canceling my Starcraft 2 preorder but looking forward to Alan Wake. And I’m constantly at war within myself, even as I write this article, to focus on the task at hand and ignore my nagging desire to search the internet for Torchlight tips.

My free time is much more valuable to me now than it once was. I don’t have the mental space for an addiction. Maybe it’s time to put infinite games behind me, and focus on the finite. After all, I like a good ending.

Humble Beginnings

2010-05-13T11:14:00.004-04:00

by C.T. Hutt

I’d like you to imagine a major game developer. Are you picturing Activision or EA? Good choices. They work together for months creating the next blockbuster release. Like good little addicts you and I and hundreds of others line up around the block near a major retailer to be the first to put our hard-earned cash on the barrelhead and walk out of the store with a shiny new game in our clutches. However, after saving all your pennies and standing in line for hours, when you finally reach the cashier and they scan your intended purchase the price comes up as a question mark.

“What does that mean?” you ask the clerk.

“It means you can pay whatever you want,” says she.

“So I could get the game for a dollar?” You inquire, shielding your face with your hands for fear of a violent rebuke.

“Yeah, whatever. If that’s what you think it’s worth.”

“Even just a penny?”

“Sure, that’s fine. Also, we are going to give you four other games. Further, unless you specify otherwise we are going to donate a portion of the profit from your purchase to either helping needy children or ensuring that your civil rights as a gamer are not infringed upon. If you want, you can just make a donation of any size to either of these amazing charities and you still get the games. You don’t have to give the creators anything.”

“Gasp! I faint.”

You faint.

Waking up on your couch, you realize that such a fantasy could never be. Developers of high quality games do not simply give their products away. They are, after all, in the money-making business, just like the rest of us work-a-day people. Also, with the economy still in a funk it’s unrealistic to expect such generosity from wealthy individuals, much less corporations.

You would be perfectly reasonable to make these assumptions, but you would also be wrong. (Well, not about the big developers, they don’t really do this sort of thing.)

If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, I fully encourage anyone who cares about gaming to check out The Humble Bundle, a collection of great indie games that have attached themselves to some very worthy causes, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child’s Play. While I haven’t had a chance to play all the titles included in the bundle, the first two I sampled, World of Goo and Gish, are well worth a donation on their own merits.

A vital truth, and some would say a key failing, in our capitalist system is that all consumers vote with their wallets. Every time we buy a cola, a bus ticket, or a gallon of gas we are, in a very small way, voicing our approval not only for the product we consume, but for the company who provided us with it. As socially conscious gamers who want the best for our medium and our world at large, The Humble Bundle is an opportunity to make a statement about what we want the gaming industry to be. We also get some awesome games. Imagine if all the industries we paid for our entertainment were so magnanimous; that’s a world in which I would like to live.

Sleep is Death

2010-05-10T15:09:00.002-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

When I first laid eyes on Sleep is Death, I was confounded. How can there be a compelling story with such dull, even hideous graphics? How will hosts guide an entire story in thirty seconds using this complicated interface? What if my stories don’t hold up? It takes some time to get past all that, but once the fog lifts the limitless potential of Sleep is Death is revealed.

It is difficult to talk about Sleep is Death without talking about the stories that result from play, and this is what makes Sleep is Death so fascinating: Each session is unique and personal. After spending some time familiarizing myself with the creator tools and host interface, I invited my friend Danielle to play a game with me. I’d prepared a story, using the setting included, about Lilith’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden.

The result was sometimes frustrating while we were playing, since the thirty seconds on the timer always seemed to be gone too fast, and this resulted in some unusual moments. We still had fun with our tale of dogs that could only look in one direction, women who seemed to be speaking from their nether regions, cowardly disappearing snakes, and one incredibly rude devil. Even funnier, we discovered, was the flipbook that resulted from our story. All our mistakes became part of the charm of the story.

Shortly after our first session, I installed an updated version of the game and downloaded some visual packs which made the game more attractive. Danielle didn’t have the new version, however, which resulted in some truly bizarre moments for our next game. The resulting flip book was only two frames. The first depicted a pair of legs standing in a surrealist landscape. In the second frame, the legs had moved to the left. They spoke: “Help.”

Our third game also encountered technical issues, mostly because Danielle was playing on a much older laptop which was having trouble staying connected wirelessly. A young girl spoke to Danielle’s avatar in a bedroom. She told him she had bad news. At this point, I thought Danielle’s connection cut out, but I sent a silly final frame before I restarted the program. It made it through, and the bedroom became a dark cave as the girl explained the situation: “Shit be freaky.” This is now something that my friends say in casual conversation, like they would quote a favorite book or television episode. As far as emotions go, pride is not often associated with video games.

We’ve had some successes with the program since then, and the resulting stories have been much more satisfying to play. The real charm of Sleep is Death, however, comes from the fact that even when the experience is less than stellar, even when you feel rushed or confused by the interface or technical difficulties, the results are personal to you and your creative partner. You can show the best stories to your friends in flip books, and they will appreciate these video game stories more than others because they are created and played by their friends.

Jason Rohrer recently said, in an interview with Charge Shot!!!, that Roger Ebert’s views on video games should be taken “as sort of a challenge. Not a challenge that needs to be argued against as much as a challenge that needs to be answered with game design, because I don't think we're doing that very much.” Looking at Sleep is Death in that light, Jason Rohrer’s purpose seems clear: Instead of delivering a piece of video game art, Sleep is Death is a medium for art and storytelling. The quality of that art is entirely left to the players.

One Up

2010-05-07T13:55:00.000-04:00

As of today, we have been blogging for a full year. It’s been absolutely fantastic to share, argue, discuss, and refine ideas about the social and artistic merits of video games with all of you. We’ve made some good friends, talked to some great developers, and said some intelligent things and some less intelligent things. We have seen the awesome and terrible power of the internet.

Complete strangers have reposted our material and said it was worthwhile! Many thanks to everyone, and in particular to Ben Abraham, Mitch Krpata, and Eric Swain for keeping an eye on the site and deeming us worthy of a link every once in a while. We are humbled every time.

Other complete strangers have questioned us, critiqued us, and challenged our arguments! You know what? That’s valuable, too. Every comment you leave us adds to the ever-expanding dialog about our beloved medium and its place in society and the arts. Your input keeps us honest and adds to our collective understanding of video games, so keep those comments coming.

It’s been a great year, and we’re glad that you’re all here. It’s fine if you didn’t get us anything for our birthday. Your presence presents all the presents we presently desire. Oh, you insist on getting us something? Then tell your friends to swing by and check out the site if you think they might like it. There is a huge community of people out there interested in the same idea: that video games can challenge society and reach incredible artistic heights.

We want those people in our lives. Thanks for reading!

Survival of the Daring

2010-05-05T17:05:00.003-04:00

by C.T. Hutt

Times are tough; money is scarce. Even devoted gamers are forced to watch every penny they spend on their beloved pastime. So when a little blue hedgehog told me about a deal where I could get 48 classic Sega games for fifteen bucks I forked over the gold rings and bought a copy of Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. I was raised in a Nintendo household, but I thought this might be a good opportunity study the fossil records of some classic games. After some contemplation, I’ve realized why Sega lost the console war of the late eighties. It wasn’t the archaic graphics or outdated control schemes that put me off these titles today; it was their total lack of innovation.

While Nintendo may be infamous for its reluctance to deal with adult themes or offer original plots and storylines, there is no denying that their innovations have shaped a great deal of the medium today. Sega, despite their superior graphics and sleeker spokes-character, was keen to refine and duplicate Nintendo’s ideas, but offered few of their own to the primordial stew of early video games.

I realize that the titles contained in Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection are not all highlights on Sega’s curriculum vitae, but it does include some of the most popular games from the platform: the Streets of Rage series, the Golden Axe series, Ecco the Dolphin, and of course the first three Sonic the Hedgehog games. The collection also includes a number of RPGs and innumerable side-scrolling brawlers that do not warrant more than a moment’s glance. These games illustrate Sega’s policy of borrowing from Nintendo and frequent iteration.

In art and entertainment it’s bad enough to see old ideas recycled into irrelevance (see most summer movies), but to have developers mimic their own creations without adding substantive elements is tedious and uninteresting. Such inbreeding leads to genetic depression, as evidenced by a comparison of Nintendo’s and Sega’s signature titles. The first three Mario games were virtually identical in terms of plot, but varied greatly in visual style and game play. In the first there were two power-ups, the fire flower and the invincibility star. By the third game there were more than seven power ups plus a variety of new puzzles and mini-games. The Sonic the Hedgehog series offered a few new elements by its third installment, Sonic and Knuckles, but it was released four years after Super Mario Brothers Three. As Sega continued to work on perfecting its fins and tail, Nintendo was taking its first steps on dry land.

Our place in history gives us the benefit of knowing how this evolutionary tale ends. By the turn of the millennium, Sega’s early failings in innovation caught up with it and the world’s speediest azure erinaceidae was run down by the steady march of time. As a game, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection serves less as a source of nostalgia and entertainment and more of a cautionary tale to developers who content themselves to re-hash old ideas rather than come up with new ones.

But the story is far from over. As gaming’s ace predators Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony content themselves with the profits from each reiteration and hasty reboot, a quiet revolution is taking place. Independent developers and home brew game designers are beginning to make themselves seen in the public eye. Though rough in form and small in scale, games like Jason Rohrer’s Sleep is Death, ThatGameCompany’s Flower, and Jonathan Blow’s Braid are taking the medium in bold new directions. If history gives us any indication of what the future will hold, the top place on the food chain belongs to those who dare to tread on new ground.

Pong

2010-05-03T16:30:00.004-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

In the beginning, there was Pong. Glorious Pong, with its gargantuan cabinet and two shining wheels. Progenitor Pong, revered ancestor of all video games. Pong, perfect in its symmetry: two dimensions, two colors, two players. Thus began the primal story.

I am Pong and you are Pong. We fight.

From the fertile loins of Pong sprung limitless forms of video game competition. Pong was based on tennis, and we now have video game versions of every popular world sport, but Pong’s legacy does not stop there. That simple idea of two players, one screen, and competition spawned entire genres of gaming: Fighting games, racing games, and eventually even split-screen first-person shooters.

Pong was pure competition based on a sport. Now competitive video games have become sports themselves. There are professional players of Starcraft, Street Fighter, and CounterStrike. There are joysticks and controllers designed with the professional gamer in mind. All hail Pong.

Pong’s detractors will claim that it now seems rudimentary, even dull, but is it not simple enough to be understood by all? Pong speaks a universal language. It is the language of love and friendship, of two people having more fun together than they would apart. It is also the language of war, for those two are locked in endless combat.

Some will say that Pong was not the first to enter the arcades and draw worship, and indeed, there were false prophets before the coming of Pong. What if Computer Space, the world’s first commercially sold coin-operated video game, had been the first to gain popularity? A spaceship fires rockets at flying saucers and avoids their fire. There are twin stick shooters even today, praying to the false god called Computer Space, but their popularity reflects their heretical beliefs.

Pong’s glorious victory changed the face of entertainment. It showed that we can enjoy technology, friendship, and competition simultaneously. In the new world that Pong created, we care little for the high scores of strangers. We live in the moment.

Our concerns are immediate: Can I snipe that space marine before he sees me? Do I have the resources to support my growing army? Can I pull off my ultra combo? Can I kill Pong before Pong kills me?

Pong will never be forgotten. Eternal Pong, which made electronics fun. Blessed Pong, which taught us of digital victory and defeat. Primeval Pong, unassailable and absolute.

Fear. Love. Pong.

Basket Weaving, Orienteering, Tekken

2010-04-30T15:13:00.009-04:00

by C.T. Hutt

When I read this week that the Cub Scouts were offering a new merit badge based on a young person’s skills as a video gamer I was floored. We are enthusiastic proponents of the video game medium, but even we will admit that there are limits to how far digital experiences should permeate our lives. Surely the Cub Scouts, an organization dedicated to teaching young people practical skills and encouraging them to explore the outdoors, is the wrong organization to promote the merits of an inherently indoor activity.

A quick glance at the Cub Scouts’ requirements for attaining the video game merit badge sheds some much needed light on the issue. Each required step necessary to attain this mark of recognition encourages young people to not just be gamers, but to be engaged gamers. The steps teach kids to budget their time, to pay attention to the game rating system, and most importantly to seek their parents advice on the suitability of a given title.

Considering the limited exposure many kids have to the arts, digital or otherwise, makes this program seem like an even better idea. Children learn how to read in school, so literature makes an early appearance in the foundations of education (as well it should). If kids are lucky, they may get to take an art class to help them appreciate the basics of design theory and the joy of creative expression. Beyond these rudimentary foundations kids are given little or no guidance toward appreciating the arts. Standard curricula do nothing to encourage children to become savvy and mature video game consumers. If they did, perhaps we would see the market for violent doggerel in the medium decrease.

As someone who espouses the virtues of intelligent gaming I can’t fault the scouts for attempting to improve kids gaming literacy, especially since no one else is making an effort to do so. I also have to concede that my initial resistance to this idea is based mainly in my preconceived notions of what the Scouts should be. Any effort to make kids better consumers of anything is a positive and much needed undertaking. So my salute goes out to you Cub Scouts of America, now see what you can do about getting teenage and adult gamers to weigh the same considerations when they fire up the console.

The Permanent Collection

2010-04-28T15:57:00.002-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Do you think there is anything interesting about Gears of War or its sequel, apart from the mechanics? Anything that will make you want to return to that game in some ill-imagined future? I'm thinking of trading them in, since they don't really offer any unique experiences I can think of, beyond the first playthrough. The story is laughable and other games have stolen their mechanics and improved them.

This is true of many games: You play through them once, maybe longer if they have some appealing mechanic or compelling multiplayer, and then you forget them forever. I enjoyed Mirror's Edge, Darksiders, the Professor Layton games, and Assassin's Creed, but I don't see myself returning to them.

A lot of people trade in every game they've finished, but I keep all my favorites. There are some works of fiction that I return to frequently; I play Half-Life 2 as often as I read Slaughterhouse-Five or watch Brazil. It is unthinkable that any of them would be absent from my permanent collection.

Replay value is enhanced by allowing the player to make different choices on a second playthrough or by including an in-depth multiplayer experience, but to gain a place in the hallowed, arcadian halls of gaming excellence requires something more. The games that we revisit time and again are the ones that provide an experience that can't be found anywhere else. I just haven't played a story-driven first-person shooter as exciting and interesting as Half-Life 2 and its episodes. I've never played a tactical role-playing game as well-designed, both in fiction and mechanics, as Baldur's Gate 2. I've played games that come close, like Dragon Age: Origins, but they don't reach those heights. That's also why we anticipate sequels so strongly to the games we love: we want to see those classic games be outdone, so that we can have an even better experience than the one that has consumed our minds and imaginations in the past.

Gears of War 2 makes Gears of War irrelevant. There's nothing to go back to, no interesting story or fascinating gameplay that wasn't carried over to the sequel. This isn't true of all franchises; God of War 2 improves on the action set pieces of God of War, but it's a step backwards in terms of the narrative and puzzle-solving. Kratos doesn't develop as a character after the first game. The God of War sequels are worth playing for the epic battles and titanic action sequences, but the first has something more profound to offer. There is a character, and a narrative, and a very creative dungeon of complex puzzles and difficult platforming.

So, readers, what makes you want to keep a game and return to it? What does a game have to do to earn a spot in your permanent collection?

Violent Video Games and the Supreme Court

2010-04-26T11:38:00.004-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari this morning in Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants, a case regarding the constitutionality of a state law which may have serious ramifications for the distribution of video games. The state of California made the appeal, asking that the Court enable states to completely ban the sale or rental of violent games to customers less than eighteen years of age.

The grant of certiorari had been on hold for some time, pending the decision in another case, U.S. v. Stevens, in which the Justices refused to abridge the right to free speech regarding the depiction of animal cruelty on video tapes. They struck down a federal law banning said depictions in products intended for sale or profit. The video game case is more specific: While the tapes depicting animal cruelty are legal for sale or profit in general, this case deals more narrowly with the sale of violent video games to minors.

In 2005, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stated that a law banning the sale of violent video games along with other obscene content was not the least restrictive means of keeping violent, objectionable material out of the hands of minors. If the Supreme Court were to do as the state of California requests in their appeal, this case would allow a constitutional standard which previously applied only to obscene materials to also apply to violent materials, allowing states to ban violent video game sales to minors in a manner similar to the restrictions on pornographic materials.

The standard that would apply is derived from the 1968 case Ginsberg v. New York, which allows states to pass laws barring minors’ access to obscene materials if the legislature determines that exposure to such materials would be harmful.

If this standard were to apply to video games, it is important to note that we are not talking about the possible banning of violent games, but the application of stricter restrictions on games being sold to minors. It may also affect the ratings system: Currently, most video games which depict extreme violence are given the rating of “Mature,” which means that it is legal to sell to customers seventeen and older. That age would be raised to eighteen, and it is possible that some violent titles previously rated “Teen” might not be legal to sell to minors either, though this is speculation on my part.

Alternatively, extremely violent video games might be given the rating of “Adults Only,” which already restricts sale to those eighteen or older, but most retail stores currently do not carry AO titles, and Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo do not allow AO titles to be licensed for their consoles. It is unlikely that the ESRB would change their ratings system if only a few states adopted laws which restricted violent video game sales, but if the practice were to become more widespread it seems more likely. This could actually have a positive effect: If the most popular violent titles were to be rated “Adults Only,” the console manufacturers and retail outlets might loosen their restrictions on AO-rated titles, allowing greater freedom to video game designers. It seems unlikely, however, that AO titles would sell as well at first, since there is a negative stigma attached to the rating.

One way or another, the decision in this case may have a serious impact on the sale of video games in the United States. The case will be heard by the Supreme Court during its next term, which starts on October 4th.

(via Scotusblog)

Dasvidaniya, Martian

2010-04-21T16:21:00.008-04:00

by C.T. Hutt

By night, the streets are hushed. To a blind man it might seem as though civilization was never established on the inhospitable soil of the motherland. The disastrous economic policies of a detached and archaic government have left the once proud civilization in ruins. Clinging to a decadent past, the tyrants of old have tightened their grip around the throat of the populace, muting their cries for reform. Even still, in a dark basement in the most rural and secluded corner of the nation a few dedicated individuals dare to huddle together and between them whisper a single word against the oppressive silence: revolution.

The spark catches, traveling faster than anyone could have dreamed across the country. Soon the nights are no longer silent, but filled with the battle cries of patriots and madmen. The seconds of twilight are measured in gunfire. The whisper becomes a shout and the spark becomes a wildfire. Soon the whole nation is filled with the roar of the common people.

Sadly, this is not the end of the story. Those bright ideals that gave the proletariat their victory were realized at a terrible price. Only once the revolution was won did the full cost to the nation, the culture, and to the peoples’ very souls make itself clear. This is the true story of ~~The Bolshevik Revolution~~ Red Faction: Guerilla, a story humanity would do well to remember.

I only wish that Red Faction: Guerrilla were that interesting. The premise of the game and the symbols used throughout have all the trimmings of an Orwellian satire. Unfortunately, the title fails to become an effective metaphor. I will be the first to admit that my expectations for this game were unrealistically high, but Volition, Inc., who developed Red Faction: Guerilla, could have made something really fantastic if they had just avoided some common pitfalls. Specifically:

A main character motivated by revenge: Living under the thumb of an oppressive government is more than enough impetus to get a revolutionary out of bed in the morning. Having the bad guys gun down a relative in the first five minutes of the game is not only unnecessary, it is one of the most overused plot devices ever.

Excessive Minigames: The main strategy of the resistance forces in Red Faction: Guerilla seems to be to move from area to area and execute the same eight or nine tasks. These tasks take the form of score-based or time-based minigames. Not only does this entail an excruciating amount of repetition for the player, every time a task is completed gameplay abruptly stops and gives you a rundown of your statistics. The revolution will not be graphed. This is just lazy programming; there is no excuse for it.

Non-characters: The protagonist of Red Faction: Guerilla is Alec Mason, a miner turned revolutionary. We know that his family is dead and that he’s a little skeptical about the whole “take back the planet” idea, but that’s it. The secondary characters include a lady mechanic who has a sort of British accent and the leader of the Red Faction, an old white guy. Also there is the antagonist; he wears a dark military coat and has a raspy voice so you know he is evil. If developers can’t be bothered to add a little originality to their characters, I can’t be bothered to care about them.

Red Faction: Guerilla could have been the medium’s attempt at Animal Farm. Instead, developers set their sights lower and gave us The Saboteur meets Total Recall. Being able to destroy almost any building in the game is certainly an amusing feature, but this title could have retold an important story from our shared heritage. I can’t help but feel disappointed.

More Responses to Ebert

2010-04-20T10:55:00.006-04:00

Lots of excellent responses to Ebert's article on why video games can never be art have been cropping up since he posted it. Here are the best ones I've seen since posting my own response:

Kellee Santiago responds, explaining the talk that she gave at USC and critiquing Ebert's response to the arguments she presented in said talk.

Adam Serwer offers his perspective on the American Prospect blog.

Brian Ashcraft presents a thorough analysis of Ebert's authority as a film critic and lack of authority as a video game critic on Kotaku.

NaviFairy of GayGamer.net takes issue with Ebert's claim that you always "win" a video game.

On a lighter note, Kirk Hamilton of Gamer Melodico has put together a flow chart which Ebert should consult the next time he sits down to write about video games.

Over at IGN, Mike Thomsen points out some of the illuminating artistic criticism that has been written by actual video game critics, and eloquently explains some of the key differences between video games and other games.

Though they certainly don't need me to link to them, Penny Arcade has offered some concise commentary, both in blog and comic form.

Send us an e-mail or comment with your favorite posts or your own responses, and we'll endeavor to compile all the best arguments here.

Why Roger Ebert Is Wrong About Video Games

2010-04-19T10:31:00.015-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

“Obviously, I’m hopelessly handicapped because of my love of cinema…”
Roger Ebert

After reading Roger Ebert’s new diatribe against video games as an art form, I wrote an obnoxiously long, point-by-point response to his arguments. Re-reading it in a less heated state, however, I found that I continued to return to one point in particular, which may be more valuable than any other in understanding Ebert’s close-mindedness. The simple response to Ebert is this: He doesn’t know very much about video games.

He hasn’t studied them. He didn’t spend much time playing them growing up. He doesn’t understand what constitutes an innovation in gameplay or a tribute to an early classic. He’s a very well-educated and well-respected critic, so it is tempting to believe that his opinions are somehow more valuable than others, but they are not. He has made his living as a film critic, not a video game critic. He doesn’t understand the art form.

From Ebert’s article:

Having once made the statement [that video games can never be art], I have declined all opportunities to enlarge upon it or defend it. That seemed to be a fool's errand, especially given the volume of messages I receive urging me to play this game or that and recant the error of my ways. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say "never," because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.

The hubris here is awe-inspiring. Having received countless messages from enthusiasts of a new art form, Ebert has consciously come to the conclusion that he knows better than any of them, despite his lack of education on the subject. He also knows, for a fact, what is and isn’t art.

Over the course of the rest of the article, Ebert discusses several different possible definitions of art. Some of them are definitions that Kellee Santiago offered in a talk she gave at USC, some of them are definitions that Ebert identifies as more convincing. One thing that is important to note here is that human beings have been trying to successfully define art for a very long time. It is a question for philosophers and artists to debate forever. I’m not sure we’ll ever have a perfect definition, and we never should.

When someone is asked to define art, the correct response is to refuse to do so. By defining art we limit it, and if there is one thing that we should never do, it is to limit art. To define art is to cripple the artist.

Ebert continues:

But we could play all day with definitions, and find exceptions to every one. For example, I tend to think of art as usually the creation of one artist. Yet a cathedral is the work of many, and is it not art? One could think of it as countless individual works of art unified by a common purpose. Is not a tribal dance an artwork, yet the collaboration of a community? Yes, but it reflects the work of individual choreographers. Everybody didn't start dancing all at once.

It is bizarre to think that Ebert, primarily a film critic, is prejudiced in a fundamental way against collaborative art forms. Who is the one artist who creates a film? Is it the director? Is it the screenwriter? Is it the novelist on whose book the screenwriter based the script? Is it the primary photographer? His statement does, however, help to explain why he is less inclined to be impressed by video games, despite the fact that many games have creative directors whose ideas are being conveyed by their team.

Ebert judges Santiago’s examples of artistic games thusly:

The three games she chooses as examples [Waco Resurrection, Braid, and Flower] do not raise my hopes for a video game that will deserve my attention long enough to play it. They are, I regret to say, pathetic. I repeat [Santiago's statement]: "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets."

He and Santiago are both right about that last part.

The problem with the old question of the Citizen Kane of gaming is that Citizen Kane is an unhelpful standard for measurement. It’s too film-specific, and it isn’t shooting high enough. What video games need is a Shakespeare. Shakespeare revolutionized the English language by making the language serve his purposes. If no word suited his sentence, he invented one. If normal linguistic structure would not suffice, he rearranged it.

To create truly amazing art, video game auteurs need to play with gameplay and interactivity, the elements that truly set video games apart, in the same way that Shakespeare played with language. Too many of the video games released today rely on the examples that have come before. Some of these early art games may seem too experimental and strange to be effective, but this experimentation is what it takes to reach that point of vaunted artistic achievement.

Maybe, like Ebert says, it won’t happen in our lifetimes. That being said, there is no doubt in my mind that video games will reach those heights of achievement with time.

Brush Your Teeth, Finish Your Raid, and Go to Bed

2010-04-16T16:39:00.005-04:00

by C.T. Hutt

Childhood videogame addiction has become the new darling scapegoat of fussy PTAs and politicians; the phenomenon is blamed for everything from slumping test scores to childhood obesity. When a new and pervasive problem like this is introduced to society, what can be done? Who could possibly step in to save helpless citizens? Say hello to our hero: a half-baked piece of domestic legislation.

The South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced this week that they will be implementing a country wide internet service restriction for six hours every night to curb online videogame addiction in minors. The so called “nighttime shutdown” will apply to most online video games available to young people in the hope of promoting better sleeping and study habits. This decree comes in the wake of a widely syndicated news story in Korea about a couple who let their infant child die of malnutrition while they played online games. Despite its good intentions, this decision sets a disastrous precedent for the place of government in our digital lives.

Video game addiction for South Korea’s kids is a serious issue. A survey compiled by the Korea Youth Counseling Institute indicates that approximately 29% of Korea’s school children suffer from some kind of gaming or internet addiction, hence the government’s decision to step in and make things right. The problems with a government body’s intrusion into the private activities of citizens and corporations are manifold. Not the least of these is that government officials have a notoriously poor understanding of modern technology (hence the quote in the picture from the United State’s former Senator Ted Stevens).

The concept of legislating on a country-wide level when children can and cannot play a game is impractical if not impossible. Even if the Korean government had the power to fully enact this plan, doing so would have significant negative implications. Under this decree, every young gamer in Korea will have to register their digital personas with a federal body, people will have to surrender control of their internet connections to the government, and gaming companies will be obligated to hand over the personal information of their clients to the feds. This is to say nothing of the fact that kids will almost certainly find a way to hack around these restrictions. In a free and democratic country like South Korea, this mandate from a relatively small government body is an empty suit. But just because it is sure to be widely ignored doesn’t make it any less misguided.

Because this plan is destined to fail I am not overly concerned for the status of gaming freedom for Korea’s youth in the near future. However, the precedent set by suggesting that government should be the intervening force to resolve this type of issue is troubling. Rather than ask how the government can tackle the negative effects of childhood videogame addiction, I think it would be more pertinent to first inquire if governments should be the force telling children when to go to bed. The answer to that question is a resounding no. This decree is a clear example of government overstepping its bounds. (If only there were some expression I could use to describe a federal administrative body as a domestic overseer of children, like an older sibling or a parent should be. Ah well.)

Thankfully there is an organization with the power to tackle this problem without spending a dime of taxpayers’ money or further blurring the lines between government power and people’s personal lives: parents. You want your kid to study? Sit them down at the table and put a book in front of them. You want them to go to bed? Turn off the computer and tuck them in. The only sensible solution to the problem of childhood video game addiction is good parenting.

If we depend on government solutions to solve our personal problems with gaming, we risk giving up control of our medium to a body that doesn’t really understand it. It’s a bad move for gaming, for free speech, and for private life.

Double-Take: Rewards

2010-04-14T16:42:00.002-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates and C.T. Hutt

In our double-takes, we give our informal, conversational thoughts on a specific game or topic.

Daniel: Video games reward the player in a variety of ways. Some games reward the player's progress by showing them something awe-inspiring, be it a pre-rendered cut scene or a thrilling set piece. Others use new weapons, leveling up, and other systems of player empowerment. One classic reward system is the high score; a modern analogue is the achievement/trophy systems that have recently come into favor. No matter how a game doles them out, rewards are a key element of the pacing and design of most video games. How easily one reaps a game's rewards is also a large indicator of a game's difficulty.

So what are the most effective systems? The most satisfying rewards I have ever received from video games have been intellectual ones; to be more specific, I treasure the sense of victory that comes from solving a particularly interesting, intelligent puzzle. Braid was incredibly effective in this regard. I would get frustrated for a while, fiddle around with my various options for interaction, and eventually stumble on something that worked with a sense of sudden elation. Puzzle games are enthralling because they make the player feel intelligent when they successfully complete a challenge. This formula can also lead to discouragement and self-doubt, but to me, those hard-earned intellectual victories are worth the risk of feeling like an idiot from time to time.

So what video game rewards do you most crave, and why?

C.T.: For me nothing compels me forward in a game like the promise of a well-rounded narrative. When I actually care what is going to happen to the characters in a game I will always be willing to try that much harder to master the skills needed to find out what happens at the end.

Exploration is another way that games reward us for our efforts. The best part about expansive world games such as Oblivion or Fallout 3 is seeing everything the worlds have to offer. This method of exploration can be taken to unfortunate extremes as is the case in the Grand Theft Auto games, where players are asked to search every nook and cranny of an entire city to locate newspapers, bleh.

I also consider it a success when a game manages to illicit an emotional response from me. I was genuinely upset by the events in Shadow of the Colossus. Any game which manages to overcome schlock and sensationalism and get me involved in the experience is certain to keep my attention and keep me playing. Whether the emotion being evoked is fear, anger, sadness, or joy, becoming wrapped up in the gaming experience on a human level is really the great reward of all art.

Daniel: Another thing that Shadow of the Colossus did well was the reward of pure visual spectacle. Seeing some of those Colossi for the first time was awe-inspiring. Wondering how you were going to fight the thing was invigorating. This is a reward scheme that Final Fantasy also tends to do well: to put it simply, just seeing something awesome from time to time can keep a game compelling and exciting. Wanting to see the wild visuals of the next Square Enix cut scenes has been keeping me going through some of the more repetitive sections of Final Fantasy XIII of late.

So there are lots of great reward schemes for gamers. Let's talk about some of the less interesting ones. I know this makes me seem terribly modern, but I've never been much for high scores. I'd rather just have a fun experience without worrying about points or percentages. The only games I have reached 100% completion in have been games that either enthralled me so completely that I would take any excuse to keep playing them (Ocarina of Time) or games that made it easy to reach that 100% mark (Elder Scrolls: Oblivion).

I have mixed feelings about achievements and trophies. I like the fact that I have a sort of respectable gamer score (typing those words, I realize I have no idea what that means), but I find that it does more to irritate me than give me a sense of satisfaction when an alert pops up to tell me I've accomplished something that I know I've accomplished. I mean, I was there. I should really just figure out how to turn those alerts off. Maybe there's part of me that still likes them.

C.T.: As a general guideline I don’t think much of achievements and trophies. When a game stops the action to remind me that I just achieved an award for doing something I had to do to progress the plot forward it shatters my immersion. Playing games just to achieve an arbitrary task from the achievements list seems tantamount to plugging in quarters to an old Centipede machine until your initials are at the top of the leader board. Granted most achievements and trophies are a little more involved than simply having a higher number than the last guy, but most of them seem fairly pointless to me, a virtual equivalent of horseshoes.

This is not to say that games based on arbitrary awards can’t be a good time. I’ve had plenty of fun with titles from Pop-Cap, but games whose only rewards are amusement fail to retain my attention for long. If I don’t feel like I am working up to something great, like the climax of an involving story or a significant character’s development, I probably won’t play a game to its conclusion.

I am also more than a little wary of games that use leveling up and item acquisition as their primary motivating factor. It’s an effective tactic by developers, roping us in by using our hard wired instincts to forage and collect, but this can lead to some rather dark outcomes. World of Warcraft, EVE, and other games which appeal to our instinct to collect and hoard items of value are perhaps too addictive. I love video games, but I also want to see sunlight every now and then.

Daniel: You managed to make achievements sound AWESOME to me, even though I don't like them. Hell yes I want to have the top score on centipede! Absolutely I would like to play some horseshoes!

I share your fear of the level up and collect rare items strategy of rewards, and for similar reasons. Diablo and its sequel have consumed years of my life. Neverwinter Nights nearly captured my entire soul. I feel that same itch when I pick up Borderlands, but perhaps thankfully have very few friends who care enough about the game to play with me, and the single player is just a little too repetitive to hold my attention.

Diablo 3 looms somewhere on the horizon. God help us all if it actually has a compelling narrative to go with its shiny new graphics and improved mechanics.

Then there are some games in which the only reward inherent to the game is your continued improvement at said game. Multiplayer shooters used to be this way, although recently several have included a leveling system. Starcraft is largely this way, though I've never been remotely good enough to hold my own. One on one fighting games have a similar strategy to involve players: You want to get better at this. I do want to get better at it, it's true. I just don't want that badly enough to stick with it. And as a result, I don't get much better. Ah well.

C.T.: There is always something to be said about the satisfaction one gets from competitive gaming. Doing the victory dance in your friend's face when you trash them at a given contest is always gratifying whether that contest be Risk, bowling, or Tekken 3.

Giving us an initial reward for playing is one of a developer’s primary jobs, but like any recreational activity, it is ultimately up to the individual to find a reason to keep playing. Some people play for escapism, some people play to kill time, and still others have a near psychotic need to be the top dog on the leaderboard. For some of us games are a hobby, an art form, an addiction, a pastime, sometimes all of the above, sometimes none. In the end, people’s motivations for playing games are as numerous as there are gamers. So how about you, readers? How does a game have to reward you to keep you at your controllers?

To Thine Own Game Be True

2010-04-12T16:12:00.003-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

I remember reading Fight Club and thinking, “There’s nobody I can think of who could better do this than [David] Fincher.” It’s like it was made for him. It’s the kind of text married to someone of his talents.
-Edward Norton, AV Club Interview

One of the greatest struggles of the artist is to discover one’s areas of expertise and come to terms with one’s limitations. This can be brutal and occasionally heartbreaking: One can’t help but feel sympathy for the person who dreams of being a painter only to discover they are colorblind, or the singer-songwriter who is hopelessly tone-deaf. It can also be empowering; discovering that one has a talent for the thing they most love to do is an awe-inspiring revelation.

In an interview with us last month, Kellee Santiago of thatgamecompany said that they avoid overt narratives as a company because, “None of us are professional storytellers nor have much experience in it, so why would we try and compete with games that hire extremely established writers?” A statement of this kind may seem obvious to many, but artistry is never so simple. Artistic creation is the stuff of dreams. Art tells us that we can do whatever we want to do. Kellee Santiago’s statement, to me, is both encouraging and humbling.

Many disappointments in video gaming have resulted from their creators’ inability to understand their own limitations, as designers or studios. There are so few companies that have incredible talents in all the areas necessary to make truly incredible games. Valve is the only creative group that I have witnessed consistently delivering top-notch artistry in game design, writing, and technical prowess. A few other companies, like Naughty Dog and BioWare, are getting somewhere close to that plane of idealized video game creation, but they still lean on a few of their key strengths as they develop in other directions.

Other companies succeed or fail in their artistry depending entirely on how well they know their own strengths and play to them. The creative team at Blizzard, for example, is the nearly uncontested king of gameplay and addictive reward systems, resulting in huge success for every product they release. Their writing team, on the other hand, tends to resort to archetypal characters and easily recognized themes and narrative structures. They’re not doing anything special with their stories, and they don’t need to. That’s not why most people buy their games.

Like many other games which receive lukewarm attention, both critically and financially, Brütal Legend was not as successful as it could have been was due to a failure on the part of Tim Schafer and Double Fine Productions. It was not because they are poor game designers or writers. Far from it! It is because they did not fully recognize their own strengths as artists. Psychonauts garnered a cult following for its creative scenarios, clever writing, charming characters, and winning sense of humor. The platforming and gameplay was seen as imprecise and occasionally frustrating.

Brütal Legend was more focused on the gameplay, delivering a very brief story mode and cursory exploration of the characters and themes. The gameplay was enjoyable enough, but still unrefined; Double Fine’s technical expertise has improved since Psychonauts, but not enough to carry a full-length game. If Brütal Legend had been given more focused attention in a few key gameplay areas, and a more involved exploration of the settings and characters of the incredible world that Tim Schafer and company created, it would have been a greater game by far. It is still a worthy game, but it will not be entered into the artistic canon of video games.

Though we have spent a great deal of time poking fun at Gears of War for its poor writing and acting, the reason that games like that and Halo continue to be successful has nothing to do with the writing. It is because the creators have focused their energies on what they do best: gameplay, controls, visuals, and multiplayer. As narrative-focused gamers, we are less likely to find an overabundance of merit in this approach, but there is no arguing with the fact that this is a successful tactic for Epic and Bungie. A game company that knows its strengths and emphasizes them, like thatgamecompany, is bound for success, whether that success be financial or artistic. On the other hand, those who find it too painful to admit their own limitations may be doomed to semi-obscurity and fair to middling achievements.

Release Day vs. Pay Day

2010-04-09T16:58:00.007-04:00

by C.T. Hutt

For gamers with gainful employment and bills to pay, the fiscal impact of our favored hobby is significant. Consoles aren’t cheap and the television, sound system, and extra controllers that go along with them come at a premium; this is to say nothing about the resulting electricity bills or the cost of the games themselves. Unlike Mario, we can’t just pound our heads against brick walls until gold comes out of the stones, we work for our GPs and we work hard. Finding a good deal on games is an important consideration for savvy gamers, but doing so is complicated by the rise of digital distribution services, the popularity of DLC, and games which are released for multiple platforms. Assuming the experience is more or less uniform, why would a person pay more to play a game on their XBox when they could pay less for the same experience on a computer? Sales at brick-and-mortar stores like Gamestop and online promotions only add additional layers of confusion to the debacle. No matter how convoluted the algorithm may be to find the best price on a game there is only one rule that you always need to remember: the closer you are to the release date, the higher the price will be. So why does anyone buy a game on its release date?

Unlike movies, which are only in theatres for a short while, video games provide the same experience whether played in six months or this very afternoon. To people who don’t game, it probably seems that the only reason we pay extra to possess games immediately is because we either have poor impulse control or run some kind of blog that analyzes contemporary video games (which is really just an excuse for poor impulse control).

Price aside, there are a variety of other reasons to wait a few months to purchase a new title. Often it takes a while for developers to process customer complaints and iron out any wrinkles in a given title’s programming. Further, the truly patient gamer may win out in the long run if developers decide to release a definitive edition of a game that includes all the DLC which impatient folks (like me) have been paying out the nose for. And yet, many of us just can’t wait.

Are we such suckers that we can’t resist the siren call of clever marketing singing us to financial shipwreck? Are we so desperate for entertainment that we will throw our hard-earned cash out the window just to fill our lives with a few immediate hours of escapism? Are we a bunch of pathetic addicts lurking around the Best Buys of the nation at 4am on a Saturday just to get our next fix? Maybe we are, but I like to think that we shell out the big bucks for new releases because, like children, we are excited. We have the privilege to be part of an ongoing discussion about an art form still in its chrysalis. As small as they are, our speculations and introspections about new releases are part of a greater record of the medium’s emergence into our shared cultural heritage. Gaming is evolving so fast that every year brings new innovations and ideas to the table. We are exploring bold new worlds and doing so from different perspectives with every great title that comes out. We can scold ourselves for not making the right financial choices some times, but I think it is a mistake to be harsh on ourselves for indulging in our curiosity and striving to be among the first to see what’s next on the road ahead.

Jack White, Rock Band, and Dinosaurs Fighting to the Death

2010-04-07T16:16:00.008-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

In a news post on Kotaku, Jack White is quoted saying that new musicians need to “quit playing video games, throw away their Auto-Tune program and cut three strings off their guitar.” I don’t disagree that this combination of actions might help a person improve as a musician, but this sort of absolutist argument has become tiresome; we hear the same complaints registered against video games time and again by the older generations of musicians. They’re partially right: you’re never going to become a great guitarist by playing Guitar Hero. On the other hand, no intelligent person is playing Rock Band or Guitar Hero hoping it will turn them into a musician, and it’s not nearly as bad as the anti-video game musicians claim it is. In fact, you might get some small musical benefits out of playing a well-crafted music game.

To illustrate my point, I will have to enter into full awkward self-disclosure time: When I was living in Greensboro, North Carolina, my friend Andy and I started a story-based rock band about two dinosaurs that showed up in the present day United States, their adventures, and their inevitable Highlander-style showdown. The band was called Saurus. Our major influences were The Flaming Lips, Frank Zappa, and Jet Li’s The One. This is all true. I have proof.

We performed our entire sets in plot order, projected a PowerPoint presentation behind us to explain the story, dressed in lab coats, and let the audience determine which of the two dinosaurs would win the final battle, thus choosing both the last song of the set and the fate of the entire world. The dinosaurs had the combined powers of all the dinosaurs that are now extinct, you see. For the duration of my time with this crazy project, I played a lot of video games, including the newly-released Rock Band.

I am not the world’s greatest musician. My band-mates, Bart Trotman and Andy Savoy, are both vastly superior to me in both musical composition and skill with their instruments. They kept me around because the story was partially my idea and I wrote some decent lyrics from time to time. I had to practice a lot to even keep up with them, and that practice is the main source of whatever skill is present in the final recordings on our one and only album, The Word Dinosaur Means Terrible Lizard. But when I slacked off and decided not to practice, I usually played Rock Band, and here’s the thing about Rock Band: If you’re going to slack off and not practice your instrument or work on a new song, there is no better video game to play.

It’s not actually playing music, sure, but it’s still interacting with music in a very real way. You have to focus on rhythm and timing. In well-charted games and songs, certain finger motions reflect the acts of actually playing an instrument. I’ve gotten more comfortable using hammer-ons and pull-offs through Rock Band than I ever was before. On top of that, playing the drums can teach a lot about rock timing and provide a newfound respect for the drummer in your band. That’s a tough job to do well.

Rock Band is no more damaging to a musician than any other form of procrastination, and certainly less damaging than most (read: heroin). Of course you’d always be better off practicing or writing, but if you’re going to spend some time with a video game, music games will keep your mind thinking musically. Maybe my crazy dinosaur rock band doesn’t prove that point, but you should have heard my playing when I started out. Trust me, I was a lot worse.

PAX East Report, Part 3

2010-04-05T14:47:00.002-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Just a few more games to talk about from the show floor.

Mafia 2 – Sebastien played this one while I watched and took some notes. The controls are very similar to Grand Theft Auto 4, but the setting is a little more flavorful and immersive. One major improvement over GTA4 is the fact that people react more realistically to the main character’s action. When Sebastien pulled a gun out, checking the controls, a passing police car stopped and police officers got out of the car and pointed their guns at him. As soon as he fired the gun, passersby began to run and scream away from the scene. It looks interesting, and if you’re in the market for a gangster game, it might hold lasting interest, but it looked far too similar to GTA4 in both setting and style to hold my interest. It’s set in the 40s and 50s, sure, but the city still looks a lot like New York City. I am experiencing an acute case of apathy regarding any more causing of mayhem in New York City.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands – I wasn’t even paying attention to this game, assuming that it was a quick movie tie-in for the upcoming Jerry Bruckheimer production starring shirtless Jake Gyllenhaal. The gameplay actually looks pretty amazing, though: on top of the rewinding time mechanic from the gamecube-era Prince of Persia games, they’ve added elemental combat and magic. The section I watched had the Prince freezing time and using spigots of water as poles to vault between. Some combat was shown as well, and it looked chaotic and impressive, with large numbers of enemies on screen and devastating elemental attacks being used to destroy them, along with the Prince’s impressive acrobatic attacks. This looks far more promising than I expected, and like a return to form for the Prince.

Battlefield Bad Company in 3D – When I saw that there were 3D gaming computers at PAX East, I knew I had to see what this new technology can do for gaming. I settled into my chair and put on my 3D glasses and immediately felt my eyes strain to deal with the blurred vision effects they use to achieve 3D. On top of that, the 3D effects were very clearly layered. Close items (like my weapon) were on one layer, medium-distance items on a second, and far-off items on a third. The 3D effect, as a result, had very little in the way of realistic depth, instead making it even more difficult to become immersed in the game world. Suffice to say that I was not impressed. Those considering early adoption of this technology: don’t. They clearly need to do a lot of work before 3D gaming will be viable and appealing. Between the technology we’ve already seen in Avatar and the rumor that 3D without glasses will be coming soon, current 3D games seem antiquated already.

Splinter Cell: Conviction – This is a game that I never thought I would like, until I played a co-operative stealth kill mission on the show floor. We worked together to take down our enemies one by one, he saved my life once or twice, and we both pulled off some very cool maneuvers. I’m reserving judgment until the final product, but I’m in the mood for a really well-delivered stealth game. Here’s hoping.

Starcraft 2 – Matthew Bamberg-Johnson has the following to say about his time with Starcraft 2:

While I was certainly a bit rusty at PAX, I can see how the improvements in Starcraft 2 will make this a very rewarding game to play. The ability to scroll down to a squad level and see the action close up is a definite plus, as the characters are animated beautifully and the combat is fairly detailed. I only had the opportunity to play one game on Battle.net, but my criticisms of the multiplayer mode persists, as the game basically devolves into a resource race and moves so quickly that unless all the hotkeys are second nature to you, you will quickly be overrun.

I'm most excited for the campaign mode of this game, but after thoroughly enjoying the "Dawn of War" series over the past few years, I question whether SC2's innovations and updates will live up to the tremendous anticipation surrounding this game. I hope that the level of character customization has improved so that it plays more like a RTS/RPG hybrid, but I suppose that I will have to wait and see.

I watched Bam play his round, and all I have to add is this: It looks like Starcraft, only much prettier-looking. It doesn’t look like they’ve done much to make the game more accessible, which is good news for Starcraft junkies and bad news for me. I predict that it will sell a billion copies. Two or more of those copies will be bought by C.T. Hutt.

PAX East Report, Part 2

2010-04-02T10:14:00.004-04:00

by Sebastien Bolea, Guest Writer

Here are a few thoughts on Red Dead Redemption and The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, both games which Sebastien played on the show floor of PAX East.

Red Dead Redemption

It took about an hour and a half of waiting to get my hands on Red Dead Redemption, and the demo was only about 15 minutes, but I was happy to do it. I've been dreaming about an open world western ever since playing Outlaws by Lucasarts back in the day, and Red Dead did not disappoint. The demo was a quick ride through the desert to pick up a mission from a demented grave robber. The job had me shooting my way into a mansion to get my dirty mitts on a chest full o' gold. From start to finish, the game feels like GTA4. Riding your horse isn't really that different from driving a car, although you can summon your ride with a whistle a la Ocarina of Time, and if you wear out the horse's stamina the proud cut stallion will buck you off. The shooting mechanics will also feel familiar, from aiming to taking cover, only slightly more polished. Weapons are selected on a wheel instead of cycled through a list, and your health regenerates in the style of many modern shooters.

The only other difference is Dead-Eye mode, which returns from Red Dead Revolver. You click the right stick to slow down time while selecting up to 6 specific points on multiple enemies. It reminded me a little of VATS in Fallout 3, as one could easily line up head-shots or shoot the guns out of enemies' hands. The game generally has a greater attention to detail than previous Rockstar games, from the way bandits react when you shoot them in the leg, to the fact that all your gear is visible on your character's back and hip. The world looks great and is well populated by animals; I almost ran over a couple armadillos and prairie dogs while galloping through the brush, and I passed a few bandits holding up a traveler on the road.

The Rockstar employee at my side assured me these were all randomly generated events, and then directed me to try shooting down one of the birds overhead. I was then able to run up and collect feathers, and he explained that every animal in the game can be skinned and carved up for meat. This sent shivers of joy running down my spine, but then I was a huge fan of the Oblivion alchemy system, too. If you didn't already know, Red Dead will feature both a morality and fame point system a little like Fable, which I discovered when some jerk tried to pass me on his horse and I shot his impetuous ass right out of the saddle. Apparently this was considered “bad” because the game awarded me with minus five honor points. The bottom line is that I had an absolute blast playing this game, and if you enjoyed GTA4 and have any kind of interest in exploring and fighting your way through the old west as a rootin' tootin' gunslinger, then you will too.

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile

I should probably just put this out there now: I loved the original Dishwasher: Dead Samurai. Partly I was just impressed by the fact that it was made by one dude on XNA in a year and a half, but I also loved the fast-paced action and the incredible mobility and control the game offered. The second weapon in the game, after the dual cleavers, was a katana that gave you the power to teleport in any direction with a tap of the right stick. This meant that if you were fast enough with your fingers, you were untouchable. This let the game send some absolutely psychotic action your way, both in difficulty and art style. The levels threw a bizarre array of zombies, cyborgs, vikings, and zombie cyborg ninjas at you, which you then carved up with an appropriately brutal arsenal and some finishing moves that might make Kratos whimper.

I stumbled onto Vampire Smile by accident on the exhibition floor, and just had to take it for a spin. My first impression held that it was the same game only much shinier, which was already all I wanted. Apparently there are now two characters, the titular dishwasher turned zombie samurai has been joined by... some girl? I guess she's a vampire? I skipped her and went straight for what I knew, because he was now sporting one of those slick samurai-style straw hats and the guy showing the game off said his demo was harder and I'm stubborn that way. There are also new weapons, and the weapon selection is a little easier to flip through on the fly. Someone had the bright idea to bind the guns to a button instead of making you select them, and bouncing around the levels teleporting and spraying lead is even more intuitive as a result.

Just like you'd hope from a sequel, the levels seem a lot more dynamic, which is good because the first game tended to just have the same model of having a room with a couple platforms where baddies spawn in droves. In the demo, I found myself in the now familiar elevator-where-bad-guys-jump-out-at-you when I was accosted by the head of a giant zombie-robot that burst through the window. It's not the peak of creative design, but if you're the kind of guy who gets the giggles when he rips the legs off a cyborg and beats him to death with it, then this should do the trick. And if you played and liked the fist Dishwasher, then you'll be glad to know this one is shaping up to be even better. Ska Studios, which is still one guy, has the release date set as “when it's done” so we may have to wait a bit before getting our hands on toys like the guillotine, one of the new weapons which is essentially a giant pair of scissors. Keep your eye on it though, if for no other reason than that it's pretty cool to see this kind of work being done by a single designer.

Editor’s note: I never played the first Dishwasher, but the art style for this game is quite slick. It looks like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac in the video game form.

Reflections with thatgamecompany

2010-03-31T11:17:00.011-04:00

by C.T. Hutt

Last year, we awarded Flower our Select [Button] game of the year award. Kellee Santiago, Co-Founder and President of thatgamecompany, was kind enough to answer a few questions for us about the process of independent game development, the role of the gaming medium in the world of art, and what went into making such an ambitious game.

PPTR: Flower contained some significant political themes. Do you believe that game developers have a responsibility to address social issues? If so, how do you balance that responsibility against your interest to succeed financially and draw in a wide audience?

Kellee: We left Flower open to interpretation. We wanted an experience that was evocative enough to trigger an emotional response in the player, and open-ended enough to allow the player to bring their own backgrounds, political affiliations, memories, etc to the game. Part of the core experience of Flower is that interaction of the mind, which we find to be more valuable and meaningful to people, especially older gamers.

The only responsibility I think game developers have is to use their medium wisely. Interaction is a powerful medium, and it can be used to greatly improve the quality of life for many people. At TGC's offices, we often use the word "relevant" to describe an emotional goal for our projects. We strive to create video games that anyone can relate to and derive meaning and value. We respect our player's time and money and want to show that in everything we do.

PPTR: Your games include distinct visual and musical themes. Where do you look for your inspiration?

Kellee: Pretty much anywhere! We first choose a theme or emotion that we're after in the game, and everything is designed towards that - visuals, music, and gameplay mechanics. I think that's why the games end up feeling unique; when you start with "give the player a sense of personal 'flow'", then it allows the team to take inspiration from anywhere they see fit.

PPTR: How do you think that services like Playstation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, and WiiWare are affecting the independent games movement?

Kellee: PSN, XBLA, WiiWare and Steam are driving the independent games movement by allowing independent developers to bring their games straight to market without having to deal with the overhead of printing discs, shipping, negotiation deals with retail outlets like WalMart, etc.

PPTR: Many developers use combat as a vehicle to move their games forward, from your work it seems that you have avoided doing so. Why is that?

Kellee: Our goal with each of our games is to try something different in video games. Combat is well-covered territory, so we don't need to explore that.

PPTR: With Flower you chose to avoid an overt narrative. Tell us a little more about your storytelling style.

Kellee: Part of our storytelling style comes from a similar place that many of our decision come from - having to leverage our limited resources. None of us are professional storytellers nor have much experience in it, so why would we try and compete with games that hire extremely established writers? We have to find another way to do it that won't put us in direct competition with the pros. The other side of this coin is that we also aim to reach a wide audience across age, gender, and culture. One way to accomplish this goal through story is to choose themes that anyone can relate to - flow, nature, flying through clouds - and then leave space in the narrative for the player to bring their own experiences to the table. Sometimes, when you leave a work open to interpretation, more people feel like that work is very personal, because they are able to relate their lives more directly to it, rather than had you chosen a specific person to talk about with a specific way of speaking and a specific narrative.

PPTR: Would like to share with our readers what thatgamecompany is working on next?

Kellee: Unfortunately I can't say anything at the moment, other than we are working on our third PSN title with Sony Santa Monica, and I'm really excited to hopefully be able to share more about it later this year!

PAX East Report, Part 1

2010-03-29T13:31:00.003-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

I just got back from PAX East this morning, and instead of sleeping all day and recuperating, I am bringing facts and impressions straight to you, dear reader. Today I will focus on the independent and less well-known games. There will be more of these in the coming days. Maybe even some photographic evidence. We'll see. Enough preamble, let's talk about some games:

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - This was sort of my emotion entering PAX East, since it was more than a little overwhelming. It is also a base jumping game by Dejobaan Games that is currently out for the PC. I'd never tried it before, and found it both simple to learn and invigorating to play. For those not in the know, the point of AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! is to score points by getting close to buildings without breaking your neck by smashing into something at an incredible speed. There's a parachute to help you stick the landing as well. You can score additional points by waving to or flipping off spectators as you pass them.

I definitely enjoyed what I played, but my computer is a nightmare place that can run no living games, so I asked Ichiro Lambe, president and creative director of Dejobaan Games, whether there were any plans to bring the game to a console. He said that they are currently at work making a version for the iPad which will use the tilt functions for the controls, and that they are also investigating bringing the game to Xbox Live Arcade and WiiWare. In the meantime, you can learn more about AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! here. You can buy it for ten dollars.

Slam Bolt Scrappers - This one looks like chaotic, magnificent fun. Slam Bolt Scrappers was showing off its competitive multiplayer mode at PAX East, and I'm not sure I can accurately describe the madness. Essentially, two teams of two bulky angel people fly around fighting little Cthulhu dog monsters. When defeated, these monsters drop Tetris-style blocks which can then be used to build up your side of the screen. Creating large squares out of these blocks makes weapons and shields which are then used to attack the other team's slowly increasing tower. So it's a brawler and a Tetris-like game combined, in which the goal is not to clear lines but to build blocks and destroy the enemy's defenses. Bigger blocks means better weapons and shields. Does that make sense? It looks fun, I promise. Not sure when it's coming out, but I'll be keeping an eye on it.

BattleBlock Theater - I watched people play several rounds of this game, and could not make much sense of it. You want to turn blocks on the screen different colors, and there are power ups, and you can damage enemies, and I think there might be an evil cat overlord or something. This is by The Behemoth, the same folks who brought us Castle Crashers and Alien Hominid, and the art style is similarly silly and cute. It looks like this game has a more developed competitive multiplayer mode than Castle Crashers, which is good, but it also looks a good deal less accessible than Castle Crashers, which may be bad. Only time will tell.

Limbo - In Limbo, you play a young boy lost in a very dangerous forest. The art style is lovely, and presented entirely in black and white, which makes the enemies and dangers difficult to discern at times. This lets some dangers go unnoticed until they are very close, and a sense of dread becomes the standard state of the game after the first few surprisingly vicious deaths. This is a very bad forest, replete with bear traps, enormous monsters, and a few other lost little boys. The controls are simple, and the puzzles seemed fairly intuitive. The biggest dangers I see for this game are repetition and frustration, depending on how difficult and long the final product is.

Shank - Another game possessing a great art style, Shank looks like an action comic book in motion. It's a brawler with a wide variety of weapons, including the titular shanks, some guns, a chainsaw, and grenades. There's also a great pounce move that the main character can do, taking down one character and shooting at others at the same time. The game is quite bloody; at one point in the demo I played, Shank stuck a grenade into a large enemy's mouth and then shot it, resulting in quite a mess. Besides the art and the weapon choices, there isn't much that distinguished this game from other brawlers I've played, but if you're looking for a good brawler when it comes out this summer, you need look no further. I wasn't blown away, but the addition of a co-operative mode might change my mind. I find this sort of experience is best enjoyed with a friend. The booth attendant informed me that they are considering whether they want to add any multiplayer components.

Comic Jumper - This wasn't playable yet, but the new game from the makers of The Maw and 'Splosion Man was being showed off by Michael Wilford, the CEO of Twisted Pixel Games. The game is about a superhero named Captain Smiley, who is the main character in a really lame comic book. The dialogue is cheesy, the villains are dumb, and the women are always getting themselves into trouble. After the first few levels, which take place in said cheesy comic, he decides that he needs to get out there and jump into other styles of comic books to get his groove back and reconnect with his waning audience. Mike told us that the visual style of the different comics would change the looks of the levels and Captain Smiley, but we didn't get to see what that meant.

The level that Twisted Pixel showed off was from the first comic book, and the cheesiness was definitely present. Instead of being grating, though, it was charmingly silly. Captain Smiley spouted moral rhetoric about free will with little to no bidding and the villain was planning to blow up a bank for the crime of having too many fees on their supposedly free checking. The action seemed to combine side-scrolling brawler with side-scrolling shooter to positive effect, and a healthy amount of humor was present in the enemies and scenarios. In a nice visual trick, level transitions showed Captain Smiley actually leaping or running from one comic frame to another. He also has a wise-cracking sidekick in the form of a star attached to his chest. The star pretty much hates him and wishes he were attached to some cooler superhero, or even to Brad, the arch-villain of Captain Smiley's cheesy world.

I asked Mike after the demonstration about what other comic styles would be explored, but he wouldn't give up any details. He did say, however, that the major inspiration for the game was the art of Jim Lee and the work that he did with the 90s splash page style of comics. Mike added that the other comic styles would be from older styles than that, and that they should be recognizable styles to most people, though comic book aficionados may recognize the individual artists used as inspiration.

Miegakure - This puzzle-platformer game takes place in four dimensions. The character can move, jump, and push objects in three dimensions, but through a button press, he can cause parallel dimensions to be represented in three dimensions and then move between them and push objects from one to another. I played through the first few levels and saw the potential for some very interesting puzzles. The game did a good job of teaching what could be a very abstract mechanic in a clear and gradual way.

My one complaint, which I voiced to Marc ten Bosch, the game's creator, was that it was possible to push objects in such a way that the level could not be completed. I asked if he intended to add a pull button so that it would not be necessary to restart the level in a case like this, but he said that he preferred the simplicity of the controls and the levels. Each level can be completed in just a few motions once you know what to do, he explained. The style of the game is inspired by Japanese art and characters, and it seems like the solution to any level should be simple, like a brush stroke or the raking of a zen garden. I'll be most interested to see how the mechanic evolves in later levels, and my major concern is that, like the lack of a pull button to prevent forced restarts, the concept of the game may get in the way of the fun.

Coming soon: thoughts on Red Dead Redemption, Mafia 2, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Gaming in 3D, Splinter Cell: Conviction, and Starcraft 2.

Double Take: Why is that Sexy?

2010-03-26T10:20:00.006-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates and C.T. Hutt

C.T.: In the beginning, the video game consumer market was mostly composed of boys, young men (ages 6-13) who wore denim jackets and sported mullets (oh, the eighties). It was an innocent time, a time of Paperboy and Punch-Out, a time when adult themes and weighty social considerations didn’t really factor in for developers any more than it did for us. Time marched on, as it does, and we (the key market) grew up (kind of). As our intellectual curiosity began to percolate so too did a volatile potion of hormones. Suddenly, we wanted more from our games. We wanted relevance, we wanted character, and we wanted the mysteries of our lives reflected on the screen in a dazzling display of high technology with controls at our fingertips. Above all, we wanted sex. The blossoming medium and an ever expanding base of developers were happy to respond to our demands. Just like the genie of Arabic lore our wishes were granted, but not without consequences.

Sex and other adult themes are now a part of video gaming. As an inherently complicated subject for many homo sapiens, it is no surprise that the portrayal of sex and sexuality in games gets into some pretty dicey territory. With this Double Take we are going to be discussing instances where the medium took the inclusion of sexuality in some confusing and occasionally misguided directions.

Daniel: In a recent post on Insult Swordfighting, Mitch Krpata writes about God of War 3's sex scene, saying, "It's funny, probably intentionally, but one gets the impression through much of the rest of the game that we are supposed to be taking the violence seriously on its own terms." This is indicative of a larger problem with the way that sexuality is approached in video games. Violent video games can go one of two ways: either the violence is exaggerated and unrealistic, or it is taken more seriously and depicted in a realistic fashion. Sexuality in games is rarely taken seriously at all, and when present, is usually played either for laughs or for pure titillation.

Very few game designers have made serious attempts at incorporating sexuality into their games in a mature way. BioWare has moved the line forward some, but some of their products still exhibit a bashfulness bordering on the bizarre: Dragon Age: Origins, for example, includes a possible sex scene with Morrigan which depicts her wearing a more modest top than she wears in any other portion of the game. Am I honestly meant to believe that, in the heat of the moment, she changed out of her comfortable, witch of the wilds threads, into some strange, brown, restrictive bra? I'm not chomping at the bit for more nudity in my games, but I would like sexuality - if it is present at all - to be taken seriously. Game designers should refrain from breaking the immersion of a game at all costs.

Playing through the beginning of The Witcher, I encountered another bizarre implementation of maturity and sexuality. Somewhat casually, the game reveals that a female character is interested in sleeping with Geralt, and they have likely done so in the past. The ensuing sex scene, if pursued, is tasteful, and we are led to believe that this is consistent with their previous relationship. Just as I was ready to praise the game for its mature depiction of human sexuality, I received a collectible trading card as a reward for my lovemaking. As it turns out, this is just one of many cards that can be found throughout the game. Each sexual encounter gives Geralt a physical trophy to be kept on his person, like notches in a belt. The contrast between this adolescent idea of sexual conquest and the previous maturity of the writing and situation is extreme.

C.T.: I agree with you about the score card system in The Witcher: it’s pretty weird, but some people just like to have a ton of sex and Geralt of Rivia was certainly such a character. My problems with sexuality in video games revolve around when sex appears where it has no earthly reason to be.

I remember the first time sexuality in video games stuck in my craw. I was ten years old and having a great time playing through Secret of Mana for the SNES, which I still think was a great RPG. My characters walked into a store to buy the most up to date armor set for my adventuring party and found that the best option for the female character was an item called the “Gold Bikini”. I’m no physicist, but I knew more or less what a bikini was and I was pretty sure that no matter what the numbers in the equipment menu said, there was no way it was going to help protect my character during a fight. I was so confused by this obvious mistake in programming that I asked my mother if I was reading the numbers wrong or something. She told me that I was reading the numbers right, but that the writers must be idiots.

I’m afraid the situation hasn’t improved much since then. I recently finished playing Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots which featured some deeply messed up war traumatized female villains. Each one used some kind of awesome looking mech suits to beat the sunshine out of your character, that is, right up until you defeated them. At that point they came out of their suits wearing nothing but skin-tight, butt-hugging spandex. These killer ladies have back stories that read like The Heart of Darkness and they are all portrayed as comely sexpots just waiting to break out of their shells for the right man. Who the hell came up with that bright idea?

Fantasy games and Sci-Fi titles seem to have a hard time portraying badass female characters in a non-sexualized way. When developers are trying to say something about how women can be as strong fighters as men I’m all for it, but when they equip those lady warriors with armor that only covers one breast it kicks their legitimacy out the window. Swinging a sword or pulling a trigger is ugly business; no one, but no one should look sexy doing it.

Daniel: Enjoying lots of sex and treating sexual encounters as collectible trophies are two entirely different problems. There's nothing wrong with a person/character engaging in plenty of consensual sex with a variety of people, so long as that person/character is honest about their intentions and doesn't treat their partners as commodities. This is a big problem with any industry that tries to sell products based on sexuality; it is difficult to tell the point at which "sex sells" becomes selling sex. And when we treat sex and sexuality as something that can be bought and sold, we begin to treat human beings as for sale, at least in one aspect. This line of thought, of course, goes deep into the problematic worlds of pornography, prostitution, and various other forms of sex work. There are no easy answers there.

Luckily, a great number of gamers have pushed back against ridiculous ideas like the chainmail bikini and similar immersion-breaking ideas. As video games mature, more and more people are interested in seeing worlds that are internally consistent over worlds that have lots of sexy people lounging about. That doesn't mean we won't take both when we can; as long as sexiness and sexuality is consistent with the world presented, the result can both feel real and look sexy. Returning to my Dragon Age example, the original concept art for Dragon Age showed a woman (perhaps early Morrigan?) dressed in some sort of ridiculous high fantasy sorceress bikini. The final product still had Morrigan showing a little skin, but it wasn't so tawdry and out of place.
There are two things that developers have to keep in mind when involving sex and sexuality in their games:

1) It must be consistent with the world they are building, and not remove players from their immersion and enjoyment of the game. A lot of developers are getting way better about this than they used to be.

2) It must not exist solely to objectify characters and give horny teenagers another reason to play the game. Immaturity begets immaturity, and complicated issues like sexuality should be taken seriously. This doesn't mean that sex can never be funny; intercourse is probably one of the funniest things you can do. Just make sure that sex, when it shows up in a video game, serves some narrative or thematic purpose. Sex isn't just a bullet point to put on your list of game features. It's a major, important aspect of life on this planet.

C.T.: I’m with you on the two proposed rules. I don’t want to suggest in any of this that sex has no place in video games. Quite the contrary, I don’t think you can realistically strive to realize the full potential of an artistic medium without addressing this important part of the human experience. I imagine that as the medium continues to mature sex and sexuality will have a greater role to play and hopefully a more developed one that what we have seen so far. I just hope that developers don’t take too many of their cues from Hollywood on this subject.

Have any games gotten this right?

Daniel: I can't think of any, but then again, very few movies and books have portrayed sex realistically, so I'm not particularly surprised. Perhaps our readers will have some further insight.

Playing With Your Brain

2010-03-24T16:44:00.006-04:00

by C.T. Hutt

As we discussed in a recent double take, there are certain crimes that video games can commit that make us willing to drop our controllers, jump out a window, or drop our controllers out a window. These affronts are easy to spot, but there is another subtle feature in many games which is often overlooked, but which can sink a title faster than Link’s iron boots: poor management of our mental engagement.

Most games are a study in intuitive induction. We try to make Mario jump across a chasm and then we observe the results: he falls to his death. We keep trying different things until we realize that we need the raccoon costume to fly across. Not only have we used our mental faculties to overcome this obstacle with induction, the next time we come across a chasm we can use deduction to apply the chasm/raccoon law of Mario science to the problem. To add another level of stimulation, truly outstanding games like Braid make us constantly question previously established ideas. When our minds are constantly active, the game is doing a good job.

When games ask us to accomplish unintuitive or uninteresting tasks, the experience is more tedious. For example, in Darksiders by Vigil Games there are certain areas in which doors won’t open until we kill x number of enemies in y amount of time using only z move. We don’t have to figure out what the game wants us to do; it’s spelled out to us in big flaming letters. Endemic among adventure games are quests which require us to collect enough rupees, souls, piles of cash, monster cutlets, flowers, gold coins, or whatever else to buy the item we need to get on with our adventure. These activities may take some time and dexterity, but anyone can accomplish these tasks without shifting their frontal cortex out of neutral. They don’t often render a game unplayable, but they are boring. It is the intellectual equivalent of assembling Ikea furniture.

Occasionally, a game will require us to perform actions which don’t require us to think at all. In fact, trying to use our brains will only slow us down because the solution to our problems would never occur to a normal human mind. In the case of a title I am playing now, Demon’s Souls by From Software, players affect the condition of the world and ending of the game by killing (or sparing) a number of NPCs in an arbitrary order that is never explained in the game.

Back in July of 2009 my compatriot Josh Raisher discussed several experiences he has had with this type of situation. These logically bereft sections of gameplay require external data to understand and complete. When a player is forced to consult a guidebook or look online for this information, immersion is completely broken. Not only are we removed from having to think about what we need to do next, we are inherently forced to recognize that we do not have the brain power or data needed to keep gaming. When a game assigns a task which follows no logical path whatsoever, our minds are not part of the equation. Every time a game requires its players to use a guide to complete a task, that is a failure of game design.

Great video games, like all great art, are most effective when they engage us completely, when they encourage us to be active thinkers and problem solvers rather than passive participants. Even excellent titles can fall into the trap of padding their play time with activities and quests which require less than our full attention, or worse, that render our mental participation meaningless. Developers, I implore you: keep us active, keep us thinking, and we will thank you for it.

Skip This Track

2010-03-22T15:43:00.005-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

“Supposedly Cousteau and his cronies invented the idea of putting walkie-talkies into the helmet. But we made ours with a special rabbit ear on the top so we could pipe in some music.”
-Steve Zissou

Modern video games give us a number of ways to customize our experiences; we can change the outfits the characters wear, the weapons and vehicles they use, and in some cases even change the appearances, skills, and powers of the characters themselves. This is one of the great advantages of the interactivity and malleability of video games: they allow us to have unique, individual experiences that fit our tastes. So why are we stuck with the soundtracks the designers have chosen?

The music we hear has an enormous impact on our enjoyment of the games we play. I wrote off the RPG Blue Dragon entirely based on the fact that the battle music was some kind of horrid thrash-metal abomination, and a surefire way to irritate someone is by having a boring tune play throughout long sections of gameplay. Anyone who has gotten stuck on a puzzle in the Professor Layton games or spent any extended time with the Magic: The Gathering Xbox Live Arcade game will probably voice their irritation with the music.

When I first started playing Burnout: Paradise, I found myself enjoying the driving but annoyed by most of the songs that played in the background. Imagine my delight when I discovered that the soundtrack, although limited in scope, could be customized to leave out certain songs or genres entirely. Soon my races bordered on the sublime, as classical piano accentuated each terrible crash and slow-motion leap.

A customizable soundtrack may not make sense for every moment in every game. For the most intense, authored moments in story-driven games, I understand the desire of the designers to maintain their control over the music and emotional cues. That being said, I think that designers could find a lot more excuses to allow the player to customize what they are hearing. In Mass Effect 2, there are a few options for what type of music plays in Shepard’s personal quarters. Why not let the player pick the soundtrack for less important missions, like those that take place on uncharted worlds? Like Steve Zissou, maybe Shepard could have the helmets rigged with little radios to pipe some music into them. That way the team could listen to something to keep them calm or get them primed for combat. It might help with morale in the vasty nothingness of space.

The various radio stations in Grand Theft Auto games are a fantastic idea, but they would be even better if they played the same song for everyone sitting in the same car when playing online. That shared experience of hurtling through Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV and listening to a great classic rock tune while running from the cops is the kind of scene that movies are built around. Turning on a jukebox in BioShock or Left 4 Dead 2 can result in some inspiring moments of music-fueled violence. Fallout 3’s radio stations were a good idea, but the options were too limited; Three Dog’s record collection was pathetic, and he had no worthy competition in the wasteland. Understandable, but unfortunate.

While visuals are set in stone by the time video games release, the idea of a customizable experience has brought the medium to a place where the way a game is played or the writing that is experienced can be different from one player to the next. Giving the player some control over what they hear can provide a greater sense of involvement and simultaneously make the game better fitted to individual tastes. After all, human beings cannot live on heavy metal and synthetic instruments alone.

Beyond Good and Evil

2010-03-19T10:44:00.006-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

A great number of keyboards have been put to use decrying the simplistic moral choices that have insinuated themselves into many video games. Some developers have attempted to remedy this by presenting more complex moral conundrums, such as those present in sections of Dragon Age and Heavy Rain. However, in the process of complicating moral issues for the player, some games have changed the choices so that they are no longer about good and evil at all. BioShock 2 and Heavy Rain present players with major choices, but they ask a different question entirely: do you want to act in-character and confine yourself to the intended narrative, or exert your power of choice and do something out-of-character?

Spoilers follow for both BioShock 2 and Heavy Rain.

In BioShock 2, the main character is a father figure taken to its extremes. Parents are, to some degree, genetically programmed to love their children, but the player’s avatar has had this programming wired into him to such a degree that it has become his reason for being. There is a little girl, and she is his daughter, and he must save her, protect her, and help her in any way possible. He has no other goals when the game begins.

After making the main character’s role and purpose clear, BioShock 2 presents you with a dilemma that barely makes sense: when you meet a little girl who looks just like your daughter, whom every instinct in your brain tells you to protect, do you kill her for cheap rewards, or help her? Is this really even a question? Perhaps to an uncaring parent or a malicious one, but as I said, the main character is genetically predisposed towards love and protection. To save the little sisters is an in-character act. To kill them is an out-of-character one.

The same can be said for several of the other dilemmas presented in the game. When you meet a woman who once loved your little girl as much as you do, and protected her with everything she had, do you kill her or let her live? The in-character thing to do is to let her live; you can understand this woman’s feelings and her actions. When you are presented with a man who caused your baby girl tremendous pain and ruined her life, do you kill him or let him live? You are a father writ large, programmed to not just threaten violence on the tormentors of your child, but to follow through with actual violence. It would be out-of-character to let him go after what he has done.

It is a shame that BioShock 2 did not play with this idea more; choosing the out-of-character option could be seen as forcing oneself to rebel against the genetic programming. Each out-of-character choice in the game is instead treated as an evil one, or a monstrous one, when it also asserts that the main character has a personality outside of the one he was programmed to have. It just so happens that to exert his personality and break his programming, he has to do monstrous things. The player may be making moral decisions on behalf of the character, but for the character all choices are personal.

In a recent post on Destructoid, Anthony Burch wrote that, “For the vast majority of Heavy Rain, I, as the player, have only two options: I can force the characters to do things that they wouldn’t normally do for my entertainment, or I can feel useless.” This is because the choices present in the game are, like the ones in BioShock 2, between options that seem in-character and options that seem out-of-character, given what we know about the personalities of the individuals. There is one bizarre moment in the game when Ethan Mars, distraught father of a kidnapped son, is alone in a hotel room with Madison, a journalist. He is explaining the horrible things he has gone through to get his son, and then says that finding his son is all that matters to him. Madison leans in for a kiss at this incredibly inopportune moment, and the player chooses whether Ethan goes for it. Like Burch, I was shocked that this was even an option.

At first I was frustrated that the game was clearly setting up a ridiculous situation. Does this desperate father waste valuable time having sex with a near stranger, or does he get back to the only thing that matters: finding his son? The choice seems clear, so why is there a choice at all? After some consideration, however, the choice does serve a valuable purpose, even if one of the options seems out-of-character. It allows the player a sense of authorial control, and it also permits the story of Heavy Rain to become more complicated and surprising. Real human beings do not develop in clear story arcs. Perhaps in my version of Heavy Rain, Ethan Mars is a weaker man. He wants to escape the horrors he has gone through and try not to think about Shaun for a while. He’s using Madison in a sick attempt to forget about his kidnapped son and all the ways he has failed his family. With the press of a button, that becomes the story. That’s pretty incredible.

People are strange, complex creatures. Some of the things we do are inscrutable; sometimes we act for all the wrong reasons. When a choice draws clear lines between good and evil, the decision is easy to make. To replace those choices with ones about character consistency or inconsistency seems a strange move, but it does move things in a more complicated direction. BioShock 2 and Heavy Rain may be far from perfect in their implementation of player choice, but they create video game worlds that are closer to reality than most, in which emotions are unreliable and characters may act in surprising ways.

It’s the War Economy, Stupid

2010-03-17T11:25:00.009-04:00

by C.T. Hutt

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

Through a combination of masochism and insomnia I finished the last chapter of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots over the weekend. From a social standpoint, this game has a lot to say about the nature of war and the human capacity for violence and terror. It also offers an alternative look at history. Artistically, MGS4 boasts incredible graphics and a nuanced (though confusing) storyline. While I take issue with some of Hideo Kojima’s choices with regard to his female characters (i.e. no matter what military rank they achieve or how badass they appear, every girl secretly dreams about being a bride), there is no question that he has given each and every one of his characters a great deal of care and attention. With such a multifaceted gaming experience fresh in my mind, surely any number of these aspects of MGS4 could be the source of an interesting discussion, but I believe the most fascinating thing to consider about this title is how it addresses a topic which many people find hopelessly dull: economics.

[Minor spoilers follow.] In MGS4, the world is controlled by several massive computer networks that perpetuate a state of eternal war between nation states and non-state actors, both of whom employ elite private military companies (PMCs) to do their fighting for them. These naughty artificial intelligences operate like the Records Department of Oceania, creating and destroying military equipment so that the supply they create never meets the demand their political actions generate. This endless cycle is created because it seems like the best way to keep a world full of educated and interconnected proles from fundamentally altering the status quo. Thus, the status of humanity is perpetually miserable, but also refreshingly constant. Things are bad in the world, but not getting any worse; that’s just how these machines like it. Your mission is to pull the plug and give the world back its ability to make its own stupid choices. The system of control put in place by the machines is aptly called “the war economy.”

The whole game has a distinct sci-fi feel to it, but it is often subtle enough that players can suspend their disbelief. Walking tanks all have serial numbers printed on the sides. The PMCs in MGS4 have names like “Pieuvre Armement” and “Raven Sword” which are evocative of real life private militaries like “Blackwater” and “ArmorGroup - G4S.” Most of the protagonist’s weapons in the game are either currently used or in development by the U.S. Military. That’s just accounting for a few surface observations from the title. Of course there are some aspects of the game that are fantastical: psychics, energy guns, and the like, but where this title really hits home is in its dark parody of the current geo-political situation.

Nearly all of the actual fighting taking place in the world today is state vs. non-state actors or non-state actors vs. non-state actors. Drug cartels, militia groups, terrorist organizations, religious extremists, and fringe political factions exist on every continent (except Antarctica… I think). In some cases they are well organized and well funded, with access to most of the same equipment and training received by modern militaries (sometimes they are even trained by national militaries, like at the School of the Americas). Real PMCs do more than a hundred billion dollars of business every year worldwide and are only growing larger and better equipped. On the civilian side of things, the Federal Government employs more contractors at the Department of Homeland Security than sworn civil servants. Finally, the military industrial complex dominates our foreign and domestic policy making process to such a degree that dozens of unrelated bills and key political appointments get hung up every year due to filibusters from both parties over military contract allocations. The implications of these facts are far reaching but there is nothing fantastic about them; they are part of the reality of our modern world.

Suffice to say, I think Hideo Kojima really pinned the tail on the Solid Snake with this title. It’s a very short cognitive jump between his fiction and our reality. The current military state of play is a very real game of which all of us are a part, whether we want to be or not. The true kicker is that there is no button to press, virus to upload, or final boss to defeat that is going to make the unpleasant facts just go away.

What’s New at PPTR?

2010-03-15T16:10:00.010-04:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

We’re always trying to make Press Pause to Reflect a better place for you, our readers. In light of that fact, a number of things are changing.

We are going to start doing pro bono advertising for independent games and video game related projects. Independent game designers or people with video game projects who would like to take advantage of this service should contact us at info@presspausetoreflect.com. We’re not going to advertise for something we know nothing about, so you have our personal guarantee that every advertisement on this site is for a product or project we support. We want to make sure all our content is worthy of your time and consideration.

We added a blogroll to the front page titled “Leaderboard.” The sites at the top of the list are the ones that have updated most recently, but they are all worth your time. It is currently populated by our very favorite writers and the sites that wrestle with the same ideas we find important here. If your blog is not there, and you would like it to be, e-mail us. No promises, but if we dig what you’re doing, there’s a good chance we will add you onto the list.

I’d just like to point out a few of my favorite recent posts from some of these blogs:

The table and the screen: a curious resistance
This post is about video games, tabletop games, digital practomime, classics, Plato, and Thucydides. It’s fantastic stuff, and all the posts I’ve read on Living Epic are similarly fascinating. You are doing yourself a disservice if you do not check this site regularly.

Feminism and Video Games 101: Shooting Female Enemies Isn’t Icky
Quickly proving itself an indispensable space for safe conversations about difficult topics, the Border House blog frequently posts thoughtful pieces like this one, which examines inequality in the way video games treat male and female adversaries in violent games.

Step Up
Michael Abbott’s blog is a great place for intelligent game criticism, and in this post, he challenges publishers to get over their fears and put Six Days in Fallujah, the controversial game about real modern warfare, on store shelves.

These are just a sample of the excellent articles on these blogs, which are full of social and artistic relevance.

Thanks for reading, as always, and remember to shoot us an e-mail if there is anything else you’d like to see change around here.

Double-Take: Forgiveness

2010-03-12T13:59:00.015-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates and C.T. Hutt

In our double-takes, we give our informal, conversational thoughts on a specific game or topic.

Daniel: I've been thinking a lot lately about what we can and cannot forgive in a video game. Games with completely inane characters, terrible writing, and paper-thin plots frequently sell extraordinarily well and even reach critical acclaim despite their obvious shortcomings, while some innovative, incredible games with compelling stories fly entirely under the radar when the only criticisms leveled against them are things like overly complicated control schemes or poor level design. This says a lot about the way we approach video games: if our ability to interact with a created world is in some way hampered, all the great writing and characters in the world cannot save a game from its faults. This makes sense, of course; in a video game, interactivity is the defining feature. If interacting isn't fun, neither is the game.

When I first started playing inFamous, the game presented huge barriers to my enjoyment of it. The controls are overly complicated, the platforming is imprecise, and the main character clings to any nearby surface automatically, regardless of my desires. Irritated with the game, I left it on the shelf for a few months while I enjoyed a few other new releases. Returning to the game over the past few days, now prepared for the obtuse controls and sticky platforming, I found myself much more capable of forgiving the problems of the title and enjoying the social commentary and ideas present. The story wasn't incredible, and the twist ending was fairly arbitrary, but in between there were some fantastic moments. In particular, I enjoyed seeing the way that both the friends of the main character (Cole) and the people of Empire City responded to his new found status as a superhero. There was a transition period in which I was feared and reviled, but as I performed helpful acts for the people of the city and my friends, the attitudes changed for the better, until I was a beloved figure who was frequently praised and photographed by strangers.

On top of that, there was some surprisingly relevant social and political commentary in the form of news flashes and propaganda, revealing a cover-up that was being presented to the rest of the world about what happened in Empire City. They went from outright lies about the nature of the disasters there to explaining which defense contractors were going to get the funding to rebuild the city in the aftermath. Nice little touches like these drew me into the world.

Many games face similar problems. Darksiders was a surprisingly fun game bogged down by overly complicated controls because it wanted to have platforming, complex combat and third person shooting all in a single game. Mirror's Edge was a great idea for a game that was spoiled almost entirely by poor level design. What I'm wondering is this: what are the unforgivable sins a video game can commit? Which games have you played which had one element that completely prevented you from enjoying an otherwise excellent game, or which games had such great redeeming qualities that you chose to overlook their major flaws? What can a video game do to be forgiven for its faults?

Chris: In terms of deal breakers nothing curdles an otherwise palatable game for me like an unbearable main character. Final Fantasy X would have been an alright game had it not been for the lilting frat-boy protagonist, Tidus. When I subconsciously want the main character to drop dead I find it almost impossible to engage in activities that keep that character alive. At a minimum I want to be able to ignore my avatar’s defective personality traits and get on with the game. When developers drop the ball on dialogue writing, character design, and story, then have me sit through an ocean of unskippable blather, it’s time to put down the controller before someone gets hurt. I am willing to take a lot of abuse from secondary and tertiary characters, but if the main character gets under my skin, that’s game over.

Repetitive level design is also a good way to make me take my time somewhere else. We’ve come a long way since Super Mario Bros., so if I am going to shell out fifty bucks I want to see a little variety in my environments, or at least in the enemies I fight. Any game which starts to feel like a boring routine rather than an enjoyable pastime is soon going to find itself shelved and forgotten.

Daniel: Does this mean you never finished Final Fantasy X? That game had a lot going for it, even if Tidus was barely tolerable. There's one element of dialogue and character that could be fixed so easily in so many games and yet is somehow still cropping up as a major issue in video games: voice acting. Even incredibly high quality titles like BioShock 2 are not immune to this problem; while I loved the character and dialogue of Augustus Sinclair in BioShock 2, his accent was just terribly, obviously fake. If an important part of a character is getting their southern gentleman accent right, then hire someone who can do said accent convincingly.

This was a major problem in Heavy Rain, a game which I otherwise loved; somehow, the digital actors were frequently more convincing than the voice actors! When you're trying to make a dramatic game set in North America, hire people who don't have to fake an American accent. It's simply inexcusable to have all the children and several of the adults in the game speak with immersion-breaking accents. The reason this flaw stands out so much to me is that it is so easy to fix. There are so many talented, unemployed actors who would work in video games for peanuts. I could introduce you to a few today. If the person you are working with cannot do the part, find someone else. There's really just no excuse for poor voice acting. Technological flaws, design flaws, and control flaws all make sense; we've only been making video games for a few decades, and technology changes all the time. Talented, realistic actors have been around for a very long time, and we live in an international community where faking an accent or acting in a second language should never be a necessity.

Chris: To my shame, I did finish Final Fantasy X. Look, it was the winter of 2002 and I was an eighteen-year-old bachelor, I wasn’t exactly busy on the weekends. I stand by my convictions that the protagonist in that title made that game a flop.

I am with you that the voice actor who did Augustus Sinclair for BioShock 2 sounded more like Foghorn Leghorn than a real person, but did that qualify as a deal breaker? No way. If you want bad voice acting have a look at the ending of Neverwinter Nights 2. After swallowing my disappointment that the sequel to Bioware’s classic fell well short of the original, I slogged my way through it. My final reward was an amateurish pictures-and-text end scene narrated by some guy who sounded like his voice was tragically stuck in the most awkward phase of adolescence. Bad voice acting is hard to forget and I am certain to think less of a game that utilizes it, but I generally don’t think of it as a deal breaker.

I think the most consistent problem I encounter that makes a game truly garbage-worthy has to do with the difficulty level. If a game is difficult because the challenges your character faces take a good deal of trial and error to figure out (i.e. Demon’s Souls), I will stick with it. If the challenges are difficult because the control scheme is awkward or unresponsive, I’m looking your way Scribblenauts, I’m often unwilling to go the distance. On the other side of the spectrum, I don’t play games that present little or no challenge. Children’s games, such as the Pokémon series, weren’t made with gamers like me in mind; small wonder that I won’t play a game past the opening sequence if it feels infantile.

Daniel: You've obviously not spent much time with Pokémon. Those games are tough! Well, not tough in a challenging sort of way, actually. Tough in a grind-forever-to-level-up-your-Pokémon-so-they-can-do-something-worthwhile sort of way. That's not really my cup of tea either.

Speaking of grinding and needlessly difficult systems, let me tell you about the game that had so many unforgivable sins that I really should have stopped playing but somehow didn't: The Last Remnant. I look back on that time in my life, as recent as it was, and am dumbfounded as to why I didn't burn that game while I had the chance. There are countless problems with The Last Remnant, including poor voice acting and an intolerably stupid main character. Actually, before I proceed, let me explain how stupid this main character was:

At the beginning of the game, he wanders onto a battlefield where he narrowly avoids death in a massive explosion that knocks him out. When he wakes up, a woman is standing near him, and she says something along the lines of, "You were caught in the battle between Prince Blah-Blah and the armies of Whatshisface, and he unleashed the remnant power of the Gae Bolg and the explosion didn't kill us but dropped us fifty feet into a cave." Of all the crazy things she said, the thing he chooses to question, as if he does not understand the nature of the thing, is, "A cave?"

But that's not the worst. The worst thing is that the game never, ever, in-game or in its documentation, teaches you how the game's systems actually work. In fact, at times the tutorials teach you to do things that run completely counterintuitive to the development of your characters. The hidden idea of the progression system is this: fighting more difficult enemies will cause your characters to become more powerful more quickly. The problem is that the game teaches you to fight every monster in the game, which can result in your characters becoming pathetically weak as they continue to fight monsters weaker than themselves. Also, a level 40 party that has been fighting weak monsters will be considerably less powerful than a level 40 party that has been fighting tough monsters, but some enemies scale to the level of your party. This can result in the game becoming completely impossible to win with no warning whatsoever.

I lost twenty hours in that game, became unable to progress, and had to restart from the beginning using an online guide which had actually reasoned out the madness that went into this idiotic design. The correct way to play was to carefully avoid every normal monster in the game and grind for hours by fighting specific, incredibly difficult enemies over and over again. I have no idea why I subjected myself to another sixty hours or so of that idiotic game, but I kicked its ass. I think it was vengeance that drove me. I wanted to show that stupid game that I wasn't going to take any shit from it. I then traded it in immediately, and I would not recommend it to anyone but an obsessive-compulsive masochist whose life I wished to destroy.

Chris: All in all, the concept of forgiving the flaws in our games is personal. It’s easy to recognize when a game has lost our interest, but it is difficult to define the lines in the sand which developers must not cross. Ultimately, as with most artistic expressions, I think that we can give up on a game if there is any one aspect of it that is so distracting that we cannot see the piece as a whole. If there were one dancer in a ballet who had an extra head, you would probably watch them for the entire show. Likewise, if a flutist showed up to a performance of the London Symphony Orchestra four sheets to the wind drunk, that’s what you would tell your friends about the next day.

Video games are, by necessity, collaborative works. It’s no surprise that in many cases some aspects of a game turn out better than others. For a game to be playable it’s not that everything has to be perfect, far from it; the only reasonable expectations gamers can have of developers is that they balance out their efforts so that the strengths of a game outweigh the flaws.

That Glorious Buttwit

2010-03-10T14:17:00.007-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is a difficult game to sum up, but here it goes: In World 5 of Braid (“Time and Decision”), whenever the player rewinds time, it creates a copy of Tim (the avatar) which does whatever the player did before rewinding time. One strange night, “Time and Decision” met a beautiful silent film actress in a bar, one thing led to another, and they had a child. They then raised that child entirely on pie and unusual insults constructed out of made-up words. They named it The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom.

P.B. Winterbottom stops at nothing in his relentless pursuit of pie. Having caused all sorts of disasters in his face-stuffing greed, he finally takes things one step too far when he tears some sort of hole in the space-time continuum, all in the hope of getting a taste of the delicious-looking (and dangerously magical) Chronoberry Pie. This gives him the power to record temporal loops of himself doing various things, such as jumping on switches, floating through the air, and even smacking copies of himself around.

Each world (or movie, as they are called in Winterbottom) adds a new twist to this central mechanic, keeping the player on their toes, and the results quickly become mind-bending. The possibilities for interaction are spectacularly varied: You could create a loop in which Winterbottom is smacking the air near him, then a second loop in which Winterbottom gets smacked by the first Winterbottom into the air and slowly floats downward, and then a third loop which rides the second Winterbottom on its journey and jumps off to land on a high platform. You could do all that with only one recorded Winterbottom at a time, too. Imagine the possibilities in levels which allow four or more copies simultaneously.

The puzzles are devilishly clever, and the central mechanic allows for so many creative possibilities that there are often multiple solutions available. The game also strikes a stunning balance between challenge and accessibility. Though I became stuck several times throughout the game, there was always something else I wanted to try before I gave up, and I never felt the need to consult a guide.

On top of fantastic level design and a creatively explored game mechanic, the game oozes with style (and pastry fillings). Its black and white silent film aesthetic is punctuated by cleverly written title cards which explain the absurd, time-bending, hilarious plot. The tips at the bottom of the screen vary between helpful hints and ridiculous insults. And Winterbottom never fails to look incredibly shocked and confused when he is smacked around by one of his copies, or vice versa.

I can’t think of many complaints worth voicing about The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. The music can get a bit repetitive, but never distractingly so. My major complaint when I finished the game was that I wished there was more, but no level or challenge felt wasted, which is one of the highest compliments that I believe a puzzle-based game can receive. Unfortunately, the game is only available on Xbox Live Arcade; hopefully it will be coming to more gaming platforms in the near future. For the time being, if you have an Xbox and have not tried The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, you are a complete and utter buttwit.

Open Inventory, Equip Popcorn

2010-03-08T16:15:00.005-05:00

by C.T. Hutt

I feel a deep kinship with Hideo Kojima, writer and director of the Metal Gear series. Anyone who has played one of his titles can tell you that he doesn’t shy away from extensive dialogue. Many of his previous titles are replete with lengthy cut scenes and exhaustive conversations between characters. When Mr. Kojima has a thought, he takes as much time as he needs to draw it out completely. No character is too small, no topic is too obscure, and no fact is too extraneous to be neglected in the scope of his discourse. In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, characters not only talk about the mission at hand, they also chatter about their personal lives and make a great deal of small talk. There are cut scenes in this title which stretch on for more than an hour. All of which begs the question: is there such a thing as too much plot?

I say never! If a developer feels they need to include three or four cinematic length cut scenes into their product and take the time to make those sequences really shine I have no problem sitting through them. The development team at Kojima Productions went so far as to include a limited amount of interactivity (such as the ability to occasionally change the camera angle) to their scenes, giving the player some modicum of control. My only problem with such extensive visual story telling is that I wasn’t supplied with a standard set of VCR style controls to go with it. There is a pause function in the scenes in MGS4, which is good because we humans have needs like thirst and hunger, but come on, guys; I’ve got some other stuff to do. I never thought that I would need to save in the middle of a cut scene, but times have changed.

I have always considered cut scenes as a treat, a little bonus for the player when they complete a given task. Blizzard has always been particularly reliable for tossing in a select few pieces of brilliant animation into their games to keep us motivated. I’ve also come to expect them at the end of a title, serving as the proverbial carrot which entices us through the game. Before MGS4, I had never considered them as an integral part of the gaming experience itself. Now, having seen them utilized to such an extreme degree how will I ever be satisfied with a five minute action sequence and some scrolling text again?

The plain truth is that great stories are often complicated ones. In order to thrive, they need details and subtleties and they need a great deal of them. While the storyline of the entire Metal Gear series is often convoluted, the voice acting, visuals, and gameplay are of such peerless quality that I believe they haven’t wasted a single moment of our time.

Double-Take: Mass Effect 2

2010-03-05T12:19:00.003-05:00

by C.T. Hutt and Daniel Bullard-Bates

We’re trying something new: giving our informal, conversational thoughts on a game we both played.

C.T.: Playing as a paragon male in Mass Effect 2, I was the soul of restraint and diplomacy. By always choosing the gentle and morally clear method of dealing with a conflict my commander Shephard saved the galaxy from annihilation, preserved the delicate political balance of the galactic council, and had a wholesome relationship with all his shipmates. What a swell guy.

Frankly, I’m all for diplomacy and reason in the real world, but between the wishy washy lectures my character delivered to his peers and the flavorless monotone of the voice acting I found myself wishing Han Solo would show up and start busting heads. While the over-arching plot was compelling enough to keep me blasting across the galaxy, I thought the main character was a real dud.

Daniel: I made the same mistake you did, Chris, but I rectified it early in the game.

I played through the first Mass Effect a few times with different characters, but my favorite two were my male paragon, Daniel, with whom I made all the decisions I thought I might make, and my female renegade, Lily (short for Lilith, of course). I started Mass Effect 2 with Daniel, but quickly became irritated with the casual style of the voice acting. There was a universe to save, and this guy just didn't seem up to the task. I switched to Lily, the female renegade, and the game unfurled gloriously before me. Jennifer Hale's voice acting is incredible, and Mass Effect 2, more than the original, seems geared towards the renegade option. I did countless amazingly badass things, cowed my shipmates into obedience, and didn't take any shit from anybody. I've heard complaints similar to yours from other people who have played the game, but only people who have played male paragons. Another friend of mine (Awkward Silence from the comments) mentioned that his Shepard would never have even worked with Cerberus, which was not a choice he had the liberty to make. I think that between the inferior voice acting and the renegade-focused storyline, the game is almost completely different depending on the character one chooses to play. This is an impressive feat in game design; it's just too bad that one of the options is a less compelling game.

The thing that impressed me most about Mass Effect 2 was the way that my character remained my own: I saw characters that I had helped or harmed, and had to come to terms with the consequences of some of my actions from the first games. There were a few quests and stories that I dropped the ball on in Mass Effect 2, but I decided not to reload and try again, instead opting to deal with the outcome in the third game. While my character's story arc was impressive, and I liked much of the supporting cast, I found the overall plot of Mass Effect 2 lackluster. Build a team, go on a tough mission, stop something bad from happening. The stakes seemed higher the first time around. It looks like they're raising them again for Mass Effect 3, though, so I'm not terribly concerned.

C.T.: I liked the story but it did seem to follow a pretty familiar formula. Evil machines want to wipe out all organic life but they need the help of some kind of bipedal organisms to do so, also some space zombies. ((BIG SPOILER)) Things felt a little bit twilight zonish when it was revealed that in order to carry out their mass cleansing they are creating a colossal genetic harbinger by distilling the essence of the most dangerous species in the galaxy: HUMANITY! How’s that for a look in the mirror, humanity? You like that? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Kind of cheesy, but not bad. I will say that I am dog tired of fighting a giant as the end boss. How many titles have we seen pull that little maneuver in the last year?

Daniel: I agree that the super giant robot person was over the top. Also, I'm not sure that the plan to create a human reaper was really that great. The Asari, for example, seem way more dangerous than humanity. How much scarier would a reaper be if it were based on a super powerful race of biotics that live for thousands of years? ((END BIG SPOILER)) It's clear to me that they didn't want to do too much to mess with the Mass Effect universe in this game so that they could make the third game make sense regardless of the choices made by players. This is sort of disappointing, but understandable.

One thing that frustrated me even more was the romantic element in the game. They did a great job of making most characters romantic possibilities, but only if you were playing a heterosexual character. As a homosexual female, my only option was Kelly, the assistant, who was perky and obnoxious and seemed to be interested, sexually, in any living being, with no real possibility for an interesting relationship. How is it that in the future, heteronormativity is even more popular than in the present? Or, for that matter, how is it that in BioWare's vision of a fantasy past (Dragon Age), there are more interesting homosexual romance options than there are in the future? Plenty of interspecies romance is acceptable in the future, but very little homosexuality? I think we've all learned, both from real history and science fiction shows like Star Trek, that societies generally become more liberal over time. Was there some big conservative resurgence around the idea of heterosexuality in the future? If so, why isn't it in the codex somewhere?

C.T.: My character made sweet wholesome love with the Quarian lady. The whole romance felt a little bit second grade.

“I like you.”
“Well gosh, Tali'Zorah vas Neema, I think you’re just a swell gal.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
*Nom nom, smack kiss*

While the two characters never shared a malt down at the diner at the edge of the universe, there didn’t seem to be much to their relationship other than a vague, stereotypical love interest. OK, granted, things became a little more interesting (read: painfully awkward) when the couple had to figure out a way to bypass the inevitable problems of cross-species copulation, but other than that it was pretty run of the mill.

That being said, they jammed a lot of material into this game. It is hard enough when developers have to work to create a believable world for us to explore, but Mass Effect takes place in a semi-open universe. That is a lot of ground for writers to cover and they still managed to do a decent job of it.

Daniel: I like that you could have a romance with a character from the first game who you didn't have feelings for at the time. It sort of implies that your character is more interested in being with people he trusts, instead of pushing his own boundaries and taking a risk on a stranger. Even if the romantic dialogue itself wasn't that interesting, I like the idea behind Tali as a romantic option. I wonder if they’ll explore the conflict that could result from your having two different love interests from the first two games. That's an area of life that most video games haven't even attempted to explore. Should be interesting.

Definitely one of the largest strengths of the Mass Effect series is the detailed universe they have created. In many ways it is based on a very generic version of science fiction, but they've imbued it with its own unique history and ideas. The Krogan genophage is a great idea that leads to a number of impressive moral quandaries, the way that the Asari reproduce neatly gets around the problem of interspecies reproduction (at least for them), and each planet has a detailed description, whether anything interesting happens there in-game or not. The universe has a history, and a well-considered one, which makes it a place worthy of exploration and I will be excited to return.

I still have so many exciting, unanswered questions: have the Reapers really existed forever, or have they just deluded themselves into believing that? Will my human-run council be any more supportive of me in the third game than the council was in the first? Will I get to punch the Illusive Man in the nose? And if the third game is the conclusion of the series, how huge will the consequences of my actions be for the universe? I'm a little disappointed by the storyline of Mass Effect 2, but as a continuation of the first and a bridge to the third, it was more than satisfying. I suppose my opinion of the first two games will be partially determined by the scope of the third.

BioShock 3

2010-03-02T11:49:00.005-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

With two successful games in the BioShock franchise on store shelves, the writers and designers over at 2K Games are likely turning their minds to what comes next. Many, myself included, were concerned that BioShock needed no sequel, but BioShock 2 – while it may have lacked the raw originality of its predecessor – showed that there were great stories yet to be told in the city Andrew Ryan built. I offer up these suggestions, free of charge, for future BioShock iterations.

Some spoilers follow, major ones for BioShock, and lesser ones for BioShock 2.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
(William Shakespeare, from Hamlet)

The villains in the BioShock series, at least thus far, have been defined by their philosophies. Andrew Ryan, creator of the underwater city of Rapture and antagonist for most of the first game, was a Randian objectivist who trusted entirely in the free market and individual self-interest. Frank Fontaine, the secondary antagonist, was the kind of villain who would thrive in such an environment. In BioShock 2, Rapture is being rebuilt and reformed by a collectivist, Sofia Lamb, who leverages her personality and knowledge of psychology to gather the remaining citizens of the sunken city under her wing.

There are, of course, a number of political philosophies that have not yet been explored by the BioShock series, but Adam Serwer makes the excellent point in this post for The Atlantic that one of the weaknesses of BioShock 2’s premise is that:

“The collectivist cult of personality Lamb creates in the aftermath of Rapture's destruction is so clearly inspired by real-life monsters responsible for the death of millions (i.e. Stalin, Mao) that there's little payoff. It's not hard to imagine how Lamb's dream got twisted.

Ryan's fall is more interesting because we've never actually seen a society completely based on extreme libertarian ideals, so the reimagined sci-fi "Galt's Gulch" is fascinating.”

So instead of turning to yet another video game Machiavellian or Marxist gone horribly awry, BioShock 3 should look to some lesser known and infrequently explored political philosophies. How about a society ruled by Plato’s philosopher king, a figure who values wisdom and a complete understanding of every situation above all else? Social contract theory has worked its way into most modern political philosophy, but Rapture is a spectacular example of a place where lives are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” as Thomas Hobbes wrote. An antagonist who offered protection and stability in exchange for the relinquishing of all personal rights might make for an interesting character, something between a mob boss and a parent.

What about a society based on a twisted version of John Stuart Mill’s principle of Utilitarianism, in which every major decision is made so that the greatest number of people will be the most happy, regardless of any overarching ideas of justice or morality? The things that would make the remaining citizens of Rapture happy could be twisted indeed. Just thinking of the outcome, I worry for the poor little sisters.

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche, from Beyond Good and Evil)

Perhaps an even more exciting prospect is to make the player play the part of the political reformer, either working directly for someone who seeks to redeem Rapture through a new approach to governance or by giving the main character a voice and the means to influence the lunatics and splicers that roam the hallways of the underwater city. Their intentions could be noble and easily recognizable. What if they wanted to create a simple, direct democracy, and establish a system for voting? How about a few hints of socialism to help get Rapture on its feet, like healthcare to help citizens get over their Adam addictions and back into the workplace?

Seeing a political dream that became twisted over time can make for a compelling story, but seeing your own dream and your own decisions become corrupted over time could be even more powerful. Gone would be the simple, binary moral choices of the first two games, to save or harvest, spare or kill. Each decision would change the face of Rapture itself, at least for a little while. Moral quandaries would be so much more complicated; instead of deciding whether to be greedy or merciful, the player would be deciding whether it was in the common interest to kill an enemy of the new republic. Perhaps it would save many more lives in this time of transition, but then what would have become of their dream of peace and justice?

Regardless of what 2K Games decides, I am confident that there are many more exciting stories to be told in the world of BioShock, and I’m glad that there are such talented people behind the helm of one of the best original franchises to grace the video game medium in recent years.

Rated M for Real Maturity

2010-02-26T14:49:00.005-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Last year, I wrote about my largest disappointment with the Nintendo Wii: that while it has made great strides toward bringing video gaming into the mainstream, the resulting games have placed narrative complexity and thematic maturity as low priorities. This year, Sony took a gamble on Heavy Rain, a mature, complex thriller that considers story, character development, and adult themes more important than action and titillation. It is mature in that it deals with adult issues and situations without gratuitous vulgarity and sexuality. It is the first M-rated game that I have played which is mature both for the fact that it is inappropriate for children and for the way that it honestly wrestles with difficult, adult problems.

Heavy Rain is a thriller. The story follows the lives of four individuals who each have an interest in tracking down the Origami Killer, a serial murderer. A father, an FBI agent, a private investigator, and a journalist are all working against the clock to rescue the latest kidnapping victim before they die. The story is interesting, if somewhat cliché, and some of the motivations and story hooks are less compelling than others. All told, the plot is serviceable, but not the most impressive thing about the game.

What really blows me away about Heavy Rain is its ability to explore complex emotions and difficult decisions. Over the course of the game, I felt a number of emotions a game has never made me feel before: guilt, gratefulness, hopelessness, and hope regained. I felt concerned about a stranger’s baby. I have no children in reality, but in the game I felt prepared to do anything to save my son. And there was no sign of a simple, black and white moral choice anywhere in the game. Every moral conflict was a complicated one. Every difficult choice felt desperate.

The other major success of the game is its accessibility. Typically, games with mature content and thematic elements are designed with a hardcore video game audience in mind. But the controls for Heavy Rain are easy to learn, and the difficulty settings are based around how familiar the player is with the PlayStation 3 controller.

Heavy Rain has the most impressive quicktime events I have ever played in a game. The action can be chaotic, but it is usually clear what button the player is supposed to push. Best of all, an error in button pushing or joystick moving doesn’t result in an instant failure and the need to restart. Each missed cue results in some small error on the part of the character on the screen; just like in reality, a person can make a few mistakes and still succeed overall. It lends each action sequence an air of legitimacy, and the characters remain human.

One of the other major features that sets Heavy Rain apart is the fact that there is no such thing as a game over screen: every failure remains. Character death is possible, but the story continues without them. Every in-game possibility leads to its own ending. This is a bold move for video games, which typically rely on a lot of replaying and frustration around difficult sections. Unless the player goes out of their way to replay a section of Heavy Rain, they will never need to do so.

Heavy Rain has its fair share of flaws. Sometimes the on-screen options are frustrating in their limitations, leaving very little room for player freedom of choice. The characters are a little too stuck in their ways of thinking, which can be frustrating to the player who thinks of a better solution. And, strangely for a game so focused on story and character interaction, the writing and acting can be weak at times. Oddly, the weaknesses in the acting come mostly from the voice work; the digital characters created for Heavy Rain are the most convincingly real human beings ever seen in a video game. But none of the game's flaws counteract the fact that Heavy Rain is a leap forward for maturity in video games.

It is my sincere hope that Heavy Rain will show consumers and game designers how much more potential there is in the video game medium than they saw before. Heavy Rain is an eye-opening experience; it shows that dramatic, compelling gameplay can be found in everyday experiences and emotions, and that we don’t need to play superhuman characters to triumph in the face of adversity. Heavy Rain is a triumph, in that it opens up to a wider audience without sacrificing its ambitions or the complexity of its themes. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

The Game Can Wait

2010-02-24T15:03:00.003-05:00

by C.T. Hutt

My apologies to all for my recent absence; these last two weeks I’ve been snowbound in the District of Columbia, bedridden by a freakish bout of garbanzo dip food poisoning, and, most recently, wandering through the natural splendor of the Rocky Mountains. It is that most recent adventure that I write about today, but first a little back story.

When I was about six years old, my parents brought me to Denver for a business trip. After the meeting in the city, which I do not recall at all, we traveled up the steady climb of route 70 though the rough foothills and into the soaring heights of the Rocky Mountains. The drive through the twisting switchback roads into the Fraser Valley made an indelible imprint on my young mind. Being quite young at the time, and having read Tolkien’s The Hobbit through and through, I was enchanted. The mountains stretched from the valley floor and reached all the way to the clouds above, like the mountain pass of Caradhras. I had my original Game Boy and a few books with me, as I usually did while traveling, but during the whole ride I was unable to shift my gaze from the car window. To my young mind, the trip was a grand adventure. Surely, hidden among the tall pines and stony crags of these impossible megaliths lived all manner of goblins and dwarves. I will never forget the journey for two reasons: one being the fantastic views and otherworldly beauty of the mountains, the other being a crusty hot dog I ate at a road side diner along the way which caused me to vomit profusely for the rest of the trip.

You will be glad to know that my most recent trip went much more smoothly. While food poisoning was once again part of my adventure, thankfully I got it out of the way before I left. I will spare you the horrific details of my regurgitation escapade; suffice it to say I may never look at hummus the same way again. Thankfully, I overcame my illness in time and last week, more than two decades after my initial foray, I returned to Colorado. I was greeted at Denver international airport by my mother and our charter van which would take us and eight other souls up the very same route I had traversed in my youth to the Winter Park Ski resort nestled in the heart of Arapahoe National Park. As it happens I was seated next to a young man named Jerald, a child of six years who was visiting the mountains for the first time.

Jerald, I learned, came all the way from Louisiana and had never been skiing in his life, nor had he ever seen a snow storm. As I am sure you can imagine, I was very eager to see his reaction to the sights that had so impressed themselves on me. As our van began its steady climb through the foothills, I enthralled the other captive passengers with a discussion on my knowledge of topographic lift and federal policies relating to the preservation of national parks. Jerald had lots of questions, and I had lots of answers and was delighted to be making a new friend. I paused in my discourse, much to the relief of some, only to sneer as we passed by a certain diner and began to roll up the switchback roads to our final destination.

Without warning, a flurry of snow descended into the pass. I gazed about with awe as the images I had cherished since childhood were recalled in full force and made even more glorious with the addition of this natural wonder. An accident on the narrow roads ahead gave me the opportunity to exit the vehicle and take in the breathtaking spectacle in full panoramic. I now have new memories to augment the old and that alone made the trip worthwhile. However, when I returned to the van I was dismayed to find that Jerald was not even peering out the window. Instead he had turned his attention to Spongebob Squarepants: Atlantis Squarepantis developed by THQ for the Nintendo DS.

To my credit, I did not vocalize my displeasure to either Jerald or his oblivious parents. While I will remember my trip fondly, this one aspect of it struck me as being rather sad. Here a young person was afforded a chance to experience one of earth’s great wonders, but instead spent the time playing a game. It feels like something very important was missed, an opportunity which may never present itself again, and despite my enduring affection for the video gaming medium I feel that it played a part in this unfortunate event.

The great journeys of our lives, events which take us far outside our normal routines, are sacred things. They deserve no less than the full measure of our curiosity and attention because stepping into the great wide world expands our understanding of it and of ourselves; this is especially true for children. That being said, there are moments during the course of modern travel which are, again especially for children, dull and restless times. During the long waits at terminals, the endless stuffy confinement of flights, or the lengthy imprisonment of car rides, the human mind begs for some form of escape. Mobile game systems like the Nintendo DS or PlayStation Portable are convenient vehicles for such release, but to use them to the exclusion of an entire journey is a terrible shame.

The answer, as it is with so many problems, is a balance: a balance which adults must manage for themselves and for their children. I would no more deny a child a game system than I would a good book, but that doesn’t mean they should read all the time either. This is a world filled with wonderful sights and experiences both in the natural and digital worlds, and there is no reason a child of this modern age should grow up without experiencing both.

The Insurmountable Foe

2010-02-22T14:53:00.005-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Minor spoilers for BioShock 2, Dead Space, and Half-Life 2 follow.

The Big Sister in BioShock 2 was terrifying, at first. I saw only glimpses of her as she exited rooms or passed by windows. I knew we would be brought to a confrontation eventually, and I had no idea what to expect. She was as sturdy as a Big Daddy, but faster and more agile. She seemed more intelligent, and had unknown powers. The first time I was alone with her, she flooded the room and escaped unharmed. Now this was a worthy foe.

It was a little longer before I faced her directly, and when I did the fight was a hectic one. I used every attack in my arsenal to fend her off, emptying my weapons and hurling explosives her way, trying to shock her to keep her in one place. By the time she fled, the edges of my vision were darkened and I was bleeding profusely. I barely made it to a healing station.

The next time we met, the ensuing battle was similarly difficult, but at the end something unexpected happened: I killed her. I stood above the corpse of my worthiest of enemies and paused to think. Was this disappointment I felt? I knew that this meant there would be other Big Sisters, but the sense of fear was gone. No longer did I wonder whether I was the equal of the Big Sister in combat. I knew I could prevail, and would prevail again in the future. In that moment, staring down at my conquered foe, I felt confident that I could face anything that came my way.

Unfortunately, this all happened in the first quarter of BioShock 2: I defeated the enemy I previously believed undefeatable, relegating the Big Sister to the status of just another enemy. Even worse, shortly after that battle it became clear that the Big Sister would only confront me directly at specifically designated times in each level, and I learned to anticipate those confrontations and prepare for them. For that first, glorious hour, the Big Sister was something special. Then she became almost mundane, a difficult foe, but one that I knew how to kill.

The insurmountable foe, when done correctly, can be a spectacular change of pace in a video game. In most action-based games, we have learned to operate under the assumption that if it is placed before us, we can defeat it. The sections in games that reject this notion are almost always a dramatic shift; instead of standing to fight, the player must run or hide from a foe they cannot hope to overcome. Perhaps later in the game a weakness will be shown, or a new weapon will allow for new possibilities, but the pacing and tension that results from a shift in power is incredible. Usually, the player has the power to kill and overcome. When faced with an unstoppable force, the player becomes powerless.

Dead Space includes one enemy who regenerates any damage done to it. When first encountered, it seems to be nothing more than a particularly large and tough necromorph and the player can, with some skill, render the thing unable to attack by removing its limbs. When it gets up again, regenerating its lost limbs, the player has no option but to run. The subsequent section of gameplay is terrifying in a very different way from the rest of Dead Space; instead of shock scares and steadily building tension, the player is put in the position of the hunted fleeing for his or her life. In a game built to inspire fear, the variety is welcome. Unfortunately, Dead Space makes a similar error to that made by BioShock 2: the moment when the tables are turned and the player finds a way to defeat the enemy comes too soon. As a result, the player can relax. Other monsters may be around the next corner, but that one is conquered.

Dead Space also telegraphs the fact that the player cannot defeat the regenerating monster; there is always someone yelling in the main character’s ear when he should run and when he should stand and fight. The tension and fear in the opening section of BioShock 2 comes from the fact that I did not know whether I could defeat this foe. This made it both more frightening leading up the confrontation and more disappointing when the first Big Sister fell before my onslaught. But BioShock 2 also didn’t really provide an opportunity to flee. Sure, I could run for a little while, but she would always catch up. It was clear that the developers meant for me to fight until one of us died or she fled. I had no other option.

Older games are not always so kind about telegraphing their intentions. Final Fantasy IV, for example, includes a button that allows the player to flee from combat, but our experiences with most modern role-playing games teach us that most random encounters and monsters can be defeated with some good strategy. There are several enemies, even early on in Final Fantasy IV, for which this is not the case. The only way to learn is to be killed by these foes which are clearly well above the power level of the heroes. The game quickly teaches the player, through direct punishment, that when these monsters are seen, running is the only option. It’s a harsh learning curve, but effective.

There is a more elegant way of doing things, however. When looking for examples of spectacular game design, we often turn to Half-Life 2. Every time the player encounters a strider, those massive, spindly, and impossible tall tanks, the game changes into a game of cat and mouse, with the player’s shots pinging off the metallic hull until a weapon capable of taking the strider down is found. Running and gunning changes immediately into hiding, skulking and scrounging for ammunition. In Half-Life 2: Episode 2, one section in the antlion caves provides another desperate struggle. Faced with an enormous, deadly foe, Gordon Freeman’s only option is to flee from one small hiding place to the next, and hope that the enemy can’t fit in to chase him. These sections provide incredible examples of how to ratchet up the tension using enemies that can’t be stopped, even if the effect is only temporary.

One of the ways that Half-Life 2 creates this tension is by limiting the usefulness of certain weapons. Most of the guns in Half-Life 2 are entirely useless against the striders, so the player feels helpless until a rocket launcher or similarly powerful device is secured. BioShock 2 has a similar system, in which some ammunition does considerably more damage to Big Sisters than others, but a well-prepared player can make sure they are never caught at a disadvantage. Maybe this is just a sign that resources are too plentiful in the game; I only died once in the entire game, due to a distracting real-life cat. I’m not trying to brag, and I don’t consider myself an expert at first person shooters. Shooting expertise is unnecessary; you just need to manage resources well and have a sense of strategy. On the standard difficulty, resources seem abundant. Big Sisters don’t seem insurmountable; they just require a few more bullets and health kits than most enemies.

The basic benefit in including foes that cannot be stopped is the same that can be accomplished through creative level design, changes in pacing, and other tricks of design: it adds variety to the game. Sometimes the player must feel powerless so that they can feel empowered at a later time. Most video games opt for near-constant empowerment; the game may get difficult, but since the purpose of video games, for many, is escapism, the scenario is always winnable. Video game designers are so focused on making the player feel like a powerful, unstoppable winner that they forget that sometimes a great sense of triumph requires a series of failures, if only temporary ones. And everyone wants to feel, from time to time, like they achieved the impossible.

HD Violence

2010-02-15T14:54:00.007-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Violence permeates our culture and entertainment in the United States. The film industry shows just how deeply our fascination with violence runs: the highest-grossing films of all time are mostly violent ones, like The Dark Knight and Avatar, and many of the most critically acclaimed films are steeped in violence as well, like City of God and The Wrestler. Some movies and television shows take a critical eye to the effect of violence on our culture – The Wire springs to mind – but not to the point of removing the violence from the finished work.

It goes beyond fictional entertainment as well. Football, our most popular sport in terms of television viewers, is about human beings hurling themselves into each other at high speeds, and serious injuries often result. Nascar is popular for the racing and the cars, but also for the possibility of a crash. Ultimate Fighting Championship and local fight clubs have become increasingly popular in recent years. And don’t get me started on the Saw and Hostel movies.

But nowhere is a culture of violence more clearly shown than in the world of video games. It is difficult to find non-violent video games aimed at an adult audience. In movies and television, there are comedies, histories, biographies, dramas and even musicals, none of which require violence to be compelling. But in video games, most funny or dramatic games still have violence; in fact, violence makes up the majority of gameplay. Think about the games that have come out this year. How quickly does the game teach you which button is the “attack” or “shoot” button? Even Mario leaps on his enemies’ heads and kills them. For points.

I don’t object to the idea of having violence be a major part of video games. In fact, I think many of the most impressive video games ever made have used violence as an effective part of the narrative. Half-Life 2 is a compelling story of one person’s struggle against an authoritarian government’s military might. More recently, I’ve been playing BioShock 2, which shows a world gone mad with violence as the result of political philosophies taken to their dark extremes. The violence in these games does not feel gratuitous because it serves the concept of the game. The mature content is present to fulfill the narrative and thematic goals, and not the other way around.

It is a shame, however, that the number of intelligent games that do not involve violence of any kind is so few. Non-violent, mature games are also almost entirely limited to the independent video game makers: Jason Rohrer’s Passage and thatgamecompany’s Flower are stellar examples. Portal was practically non-violent; the threat of player death was present, but for the most part there was no direct confrontation or harm caused by the player. But even less action-oriented games have become more violent in recent years: racing games have come to pride themselves on their realistic car crashes and vehicle damage. Some hockey games have whole mechanics added so that the player can get into fights in the middle of the game.

I bemoan the lack of variety in video games today, and the fact that video game makers do not believe that they could make compelling gameplay without violence, but most of all I am disturbed by the obsession with making violence more brutal, more detailed, and more gruesome. Violence is disturbing enough in reality; why would we want to make our leisure activities as horrifying as a real war or an actual car crash? Upgraded graphical possibilities lead us closer and closer to violence which looks and functions like violence does in the real world. In God of War, when Kratos pulls a polygonal enemy in half, it looks cartoonish and exaggerated. In God of War 3, when he splits open a centaur, its intestines spill out onto the ground. Suddenly this exaggerated series about the world of Greek myth is becoming gruesome and difficult to stomach.

I’m of two minds with the development of high-definition, realistic violence: in one sense, I don’t think violence should be easy to stomach. Violence is a terrible thing, and making it look less real for the sake of the audience is essentially whitewashing a real issue and creating unrealistic ideas of the consequences of terrible, violent actions. On the other hand, filling our entertainment with brutal, realistic violence desensitizes human beings to the realistic nature of violence. My stomach still turns when I see a drill in BioShock puncture a human being, no matter how spliced they are, but I am sure that there are some people who do not have that reaction. There are people across the United States, and elsewhere, who get excited about the blood and gore in the new Aliens vs. Predator game or the next in an unending series of torture porn movies. This disturbs me deeply.

Obviously, it is up to the parents of children to teach them a moral compass, explain the horrors of violence, teach them to be peaceful and kind, and keep them from consuming extremely violent media at a young, impressionable age. But as it becomes easier and easier for video games to portray realistic violence, game designers should examine how much they are willing to contribute to our society’s obsession with blood, guts and violence. While a great movie like Pan’s Labyrinth may have a few moments of brutal, realistic violence, games like BioShock 2 and God of War 3 make it the central gameplay mechanic of their entire games. Instead of one shocking and horrifying scene, gamers are playing through bloodbath after bloodbath, sometimes for hours at a time. A person with a solid moral foundation and a clear ability to distinguish fantasy from reality should be able to separate this from the real world, but that does not describe all people from all families.

Game designers should ask themselves how much responsibility they are willing to foist off onto the violence in other media and the failure of parents. Video games are not solely responsible for violence in our culture, but they are contributors, just like movies, television, and news outlets are contributors. As graphics become more realistic and the world’s fascination with violence grows, it begs several questions: How much violence do we want to add to an already violent world? Should we be striving for more realism in video game violence, or keep it so unrealistic that it is clearly separated from reality? At the very least, aren’t there a lot of other options for how to make an incredible game?

War Game Theory

2010-02-04T15:39:00.006-05:00

by C.T. Hutt

Recently, I’ve been playing an open world game where the main character is a member of a secret organization outlawed by the puppet government which is propped up by an occupying foreign power. As a member of this organization, you are dispatched on a variety of missions to destroy this occupying power using any means necessary, with an almost total disregard for civilian casualties and property damage. Your methods include car bombs, assassinations, and hiding amidst the general populace to avoid detection. Interestingly, this game is not the latest recruiting effort from the Al-Qaeda R&D department, but rather an open world shoot ‘em up based on the French resistance to the Nazi occupation of Paris. The game is called The Saboteur and it was produced by the now defunct Pandemic Studios.

Before I’m hauled out of my house and beaten to death for the comparisons I just made, let me say that the French resistance was a heroic endeavor undertaken during impossible times by some of the truest patriots in France’s history, I have nothing but respect for the men and women of the United States armed forces, and Al Qaeda are a collection of fanatics who have chosen violence of the most depraved and indifferent sort. The Saboteur is played from the perspective of a character who utilizes terrorism to achieve his goals, and as such I believe that it is a highly relevant piece of work given the contemporary “war on terror.”

Your character in The Saboteur is named Sean Devlin, a stereotypical Irish rogue based on an actual WWII English operative, William Grover-Williams. Whatever else this game may be, I have to give the developers credit for publishing a historical piece loosely based on a real person; we don’t see nearly enough of that. Visually, the game is quite striking: sections of Paris which have yet to be liberated are black and white, with the exception of the burning red surrounding every swastika and propaganda poster. The game play is adequate, the controls are intuitive, and the game flows from combat to sneaking to driving with few seams. There are a few impressive action set pieces in The Saboteur, and more than enough free-running mayhem to keep any open world fan busy for hours. With the exception of a few glitches, The Saboteur is a solid, if unremarkable, gaming experience.

What struck me about The Saboteur was not the game itself, but the perspective from which it is played. Sean Devlin is a video game cliché, his motivation is revenge, and he’s tough but rather charming, in a mass murdering kind of way. It’s not who he is, but what he is that sparked my interest. Sean Devlin is an insurgent, a man who uses violence and naked aggression to harass his enemies and win over the general populace. What’s more, despite the horrors of everyday life in occupied France, Sean has a grand old time doing what he does best: blowing up Nazis. Every time a player bombs one of the hundreds of viable targets in the game, Sean chuckles and mutters some ridiculous catch phrase in an over-the-top Irish accent. The Resistance is really just an excuse for Sean, a chance to let his inner demons loose. The fact that he is fighting for a good cause is purely incidental. Terrorism is an inherently immoral and unethical activity, and just because Sean Devlin is on the right side of a conflict doesn’t make him a hero. On the contrary, if he were a real person we would label him a megalomaniacal butcher, not a hero.

Since the September eleventh attacks on the United States, I have struggled to understand why a group of people would be willing to dedicate themselves to terror and destruction without a tenable long term strategy or goal. And through this title and a little research into the matter, the answer became clear.

It is widely and incorrectly assumed that religious and political terrorists carry out their attacks because they are working toward some kind of broad social change. Hamas fighters who launch rockets at people’s homes from the Gaza strip claim that they are doing so for Palestinian independence. Timothy McVeigh who blew up the Murrah Federal building in 1995 claimed he did so in retaliation for the U.S. Government’s handling of the Waco Siege two years earlier. The terrorists who brought down the world trade center reportedly did so because of a disagreement over U.S. foreign policy towards Israel and a general disapproval of our way of life. Whether each particular brand of justification leaned toward religion or politics, all are equally fallacious. I will grant that terrorism has often been a bi-product of social movements, such as the French resistance or even the American Revolutionary war, but it has never been the central goal of those movements. The employment of terrorist methods to further a given goal is neither effective in the long term nor ethically sound. No matter how many rockets are fired, Israel will not be packing up and moving to Europe. No matter how many buildings are destroyed, the federal government will remain the federal government. And finally, no matter how many of our planes are destroyed, Americans will keep on eating cheeseburgers. In short, terrorism alone is not an effective means of achieving anything beyond the spread of chaos and fear.

Why then do Al-Qaeda and similar organizations carry out these terrible actions? I believe that they do so because their supposed causes are merely a means to an end; terrorism itself is their very raison d'etre. Like Sean Devlin in The Saboteur, terrorists commit terrorism because to them it is a game. Unlike Sean Devlin, they have not attached their proclivities toward violence to a feasible or genuine social movement. Because they are unbound by any drive to achieve a productive end, but rather to simply perpetuate the game, they feel justified in every action they take because within the confines of their perceptions, it’s fair play, and what’s more, it’s good sport. To them, pulling off a particularly devastating attack under the nose of our modern security is a great triumph. It doesn’t matter if no positive change occurs as a result of their actions because they have already taken everything they wanted from the event. As time goes by, the game changes, maybe it gets harder, but because there are no real long term objectives for them, it will never stop. It’s a frightening concept to consider in its entirety.

Our national response to international terror has been to try to beat terrorists at their own game. Sadly, by engaging them in an endless conflict with no specific goals, we haven’t lessened the appeal of terrorism; we’ve simply upped the difficulty and provided them with additional excuses to perpetuate the contest. We can’t kill them into seeing our side of things anymore than they can kill us out of our way of life, but we both keep trying. I think we would have greater success if we were to concentrate on removing the conditions necessary for the other side to play the game. For example, if Al-Qaeda were unable to recruit more young people to its cause, it would be incapable of perpetuating itself. If the victims of suicide bombings were to receive more media attention than the bombers themselves, public sentiment could turn against the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. If a generation of young people were to receive contemporary levels of education and access to other points of view, it could help to reduce the viability of terrorism as an option for solving their problems. It’s the digital age; our greatest weapon is our enhanced ability to communicate and disseminate information, but for some reason we have not been employing it effectively in the war on terror, and I can only guess as to why.

I believe that The Saboteur was created primarily as entertainment rather than social commentary. Furthermore, it is a work of fiction; no one gets hurt by playing it and it doesn’t teach children how to become insurgents or any other such nonsense. That being said, I think that Pandemic Studios made a bold choice in releasing this title during a period in our history during which some of the greatest military, political, and judiciary minds in our society are struggling to find the lines between terrorists, enemy combatants, and freedom fighters. All operate in very similar ways, but without truly understanding why our enemies do what they do it may be impossible to bring the “war on terror” to an end. In any case, The Saboteur provides an interesting perspective on the subject and an enjoyable gameplay experience. I think it is worthy to note that without restraint, purpose, and critical thought, war becomes an endless game where people like Sean Devlin may have a chance to shine, but where most of the population and civilization as a whole can only lose.

If This Is an Open World, Why Are All the Doors Closed?

2010-02-01T11:29:00.004-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

I was hunting down another surveillance device on the side of a building in inFamous, struggling with the awkward platforming controls. This was the third building covered in these blinking red devices, and I had to track down each one and get right next to it to deactivate it. I was stuck, once again, jumping up to grab one ledge and accidentally clinging to another, when it occurred to me just how little open world games bring to the table. The formula for creating an open world game seems to be this: Take a normal, linear story, separate it into missions, and require the player to do a lot of travelling to get to each mission. Then throw in lots of dull, repetitive side missions, hidden objects, collectibles, etc. And don’t worry too much about sloppy, over-complicated control schemes or glitches; those have come to be expected in open worlds.

At their very best, open world games offer one of two things not present in most linear video games: the ability to do almost anything and push the boundaries of the world, and a sense of discovery and wonder. Grand Theft Auto, as a series, became famous largely for the former. There is a linear story in each Grand Theft Auto game, but the appeal for many is the ability to do as one pleases. You want to spend all your time hitting on women and eating hot dogs? Fine. Want to be involved in high speed chases with the cops? Sure. Want to see how far you can jump on a motorcycle? Go for it. Will you obey traffic laws, or drive recklessly? Do you want to travel by bicycle or jet pack? This is a valid and useful approach to the open world game, because the openness is about options over environment. Grand Theft Auto presents a playground.

The other approach to the open world relies more fully on the aspect of exploration. This school of thought is based on the appeal of discovering new and interesting places, and relies more thoroughly on visual and narrative design. An excellent example of this school of open world design is Fallout 3, which had several completely optional locations with compelling, insulated stories that outstripped the cliché overarching plot of the game. Some of the vaults that dotted the landscape, for example, oozed with tension, intrigue, and atmosphere. And if the player didn’t go out exploring, they would never be seen. Brütal Legend managed to make exploration exciting simply by virtue of its creative environmental design. Every heavy metal landscape had some bizarre new piece of architecture or natural growth worthy of an album cover. Fallout 3 and Brütal Legend show their seams elsewhere, but they each get a few things right; it’s clear, at least, why the creators wanted to set their games in open worlds.

If an open world game doesn’t provide one of these two benefits, why bother making it an open world game at all? Playing inFamous, I continue to wish that the same plot had been told in a completely linear fashion. Taking breaks in the action to replay the same mission types reduced the enjoyment I was getting from the game. Just because a mission is optional is no excuse to make it boring. Assassin’s Creed was criticized for the same problem; there just weren’t enough different things to do to keep the experience consistently entertaining. If inFamous were a more linear, plot-driven game, there wouldn’t be so much junk on the periphery, spoiling an otherwise fun and exciting premise.

Also, for some reason open world games have become synonymous with poor controls and technical difficulties. It is difficult to get Cole, the lead in inFamous, to jump and land just where you want him to or cling to the right part of the building. The cover mechanic in Grand Theft Auto IV was obtuse and the car controls were needlessly difficult to master. The first Assassin’s Creed gave the player a huge world to explore and the graceful, simple controls to explore it, and then killed the player if they accidentally took a dip in any body of water. And almost every open world game ever made has had problems with texture loading, slowdown, screen tearing, and crashing. What rule determined that having a more complicated world gave the game designers license to make a less functional one that’s harder to interact with?

I can accept technical issues; I prefer a well-polished game, but I’ll take a fun one with a few hiccups. A strange control system is less forgivable, but I’ll learn it if the game makes up for it in other ways. The real tragedy of open world games is that they are still designed just like linear experiences. There is still a main storyline that the player is meant to traverse, at the end of which something climactic happens and the credits roll. Maybe the game lets the player continue after the end credits, but the narrative is finished.

A truly open world would let the player set their own goal. Maybe they want to end crime in the city, once and for all, by working their way through the crime families and striking fear into street criminals. Maybe they want to be adventurers and thrill seekers, and run a business to finance their every whim. Maybe they just want to find the right person to love, and make sure that they are both safe from the forces allied against them. Adding every option imaginable is an impossible task, but more available storylines will result in a more open world. The credits should never roll on a real open world game. The game world should just present itself to the player and ask them how they want to change it.

Trigger Pastime

2010-01-28T09:38:00.021-05:00

by C.T. Hutt

Politicians and concerned parents often criticize video games for encouraging insensitivity towards violence. Children should not be allowed to play violent video games and it is incumbent upon parents to make sure that they do not do so. That being said, it is an undeniable fact that action, and often violent action, is the central mechanic of many video games. Without a dragon to slay, a cause to fight for, or a horde to overcome, many video games would be too boring to play. This precept might explain why the romantic comedy genre has not yet found a place in the popular gaming market. Action games such as Uncharted, Half-Life, Mass Effect, and Gears of War are among the most popular games in the medium and all rely on the challenge of being an effective killer and survivor. Developers are receptive to the player’s desire for realistic action, but are also fairly sensitive to growing concerns that kill crazy violence with no moral compass is not well received by mainstream media (please see every news story ever written on GTA). As gamers we want to square off against the most dangerous prey, humanity, but also want to believe that our characters are the good guys. As such, violence in action games is usually directed at enemies which walk and talk and fight like people, but for whom we feel little pity when blowing away en masse, such as:

Robots

Automated human beings are the optimal target for ethically clear mass murder. Unfeeling machines probably don’t have children back at home and, better still, they can’t even register injury on an emotional level. If you blast the arm off a Geth in Mass Effect, not only will it not feel pain, it won’t even take it personally. So long as developers shy away from issues like programmed self awareness and virtual personality, a robot is nothing more than a toaster with a gun. Gamers can sleep very soundly on a pile of dismembered cyborg limbs without so much as a nightmare (well, they would probably have a few).

Goblins/Subhumans/Aliens
In Gears of War, gamers are called on to do a whole lot of killing. Since pushing a chainsaw bayonet through the chest of a screaming human being might be considered mentally scarring to anyone, the Cogs in Gears of War square off against an army of human-like (but not quite human) monsters called Locusts. In Dragon Age: Origins the protagonist slaughters their way through thousands of demonic Darkspawn to reach their goals. Whether you are facing off against orcs, aliens, or genetically engineered freaks, what you are really fighting against is a personification of the dark side of humanity.

Dehumanizing one’s enemies is a propaganda tactic as old as war itself. So long as we can refer to our enemies as outsiders, whether we label them as a separate species or use a racial slur to describe them, we can justify taking their lives without feeling as though we have done anything wrong. Video games let us take this idea a step further and change the actual image of adversaries rather than just our perceptions of them, allowing us to pull the trigger again and again without stopping to ask why.

Zombies

Now we’ve made the cross over from inhuman to human, but zombies just barely fit the category. When you put a bullet through a zombie’s rotting brain you are really doing it a favor. They are not, in the strictest sense, alive to begin with. As such, re-killing them is not only an action done to preserve your life, but to restore the natural order of things. No matter how many of the shambling corpse folk you mow down, the actual number of human beings you’ve killed will always remain at a family friendly zero. A zombie is, for all intents and purposes, a skin robot, and all the same robot moralities apply. The rag tag survivors in Left 4 Dead don’t need to say a Hail Mary for each of the infected they destroy; they are in the clear.

Nazis
Since the end of World War 2, Germany has gone to great lengths to live down its recent past. Every nation on the planet with a shred of decency or ethics must eventually come face to face with its share of national shame. As leaders in the international effort to secure transnational peace and liberalization, I’m sure this feeling is especially acute for the citizens of modern Democratic Germany when games like The Saboteur and Call of Duty are released to serve as a reminder of the terrible events perpetrated by the National Socialist Workers Party under Adolf Hitler. As the current U.S. president is fond of saying, the Third Reich was on the wrong side of history. Whatever a protagonist does to a Nazi in a video game seems justified because the people playing the game are presumably aware of the atrocities the Nazis committed during the war. Hypothetically, when you shoot a video game Nazi you are working to prevent or punish an unseen video game holocaust. Developers use a similar mentality in almost all games where you are up against some kind of army or paramilitary force. The Inglourious Bastards standard of ethics in video games (i.e., anything I do to you is alright, because you will always be worse than I am) has been an industry standard since the original Wolfenstein.

This gets into some fairly shaky ethical territory; all war is morally ambiguous to the people fighting in it. Again, children should not be playing these games and before anyone picked up a title like this I would encourage them to at least become acquainted with the basic history behind the game. Modern political discourse is littered with ham-fisted references to fascism and Stalinist communism on the part of both the major parties in the United States. Telling impressionable people in one area of society that it is okay to kill Nazis and telling them in another area that “the X party are a bunch of Nazis” could lead to some very foolish consequences.

Someone Wearing a Mask
If developers feel that they absolutely must include a mass of antagonists who are dead to rights human beings (and not goose-stepping swastika jockeys) they often at least have the decency to cover their faces. You may have used an X-wing to crush swarms of storm troopers in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed but they all wore their giant face covering helmets so you never saw the fear or anguish in their eyes as you did it. Similarly, the full plate mail worn by the knights in Demon’s Souls robs them of all character and individuality. You also can’t see them spit blood when you stab them. Hell, they could be smiling under all that steel for all you know. Whether you are fighting ninjas, knights, terrorists, assassins, bank robbers, or whoever, more often than not developers will cover their faces with something.

Sometimes, instead of a literal mask, developers choose to pan away from the worst of the violence taking place or, as in Empire Total War, make the characters so small and ill defined that we cannot make out their individual expressions. We are not the Joker, we don’t savor the little emotions in an opponent’s face when they expire.

This guy is just asking for it

No matter how developers dress them up, the hundreds of bad guys we waste in video games are representations of human beings. Since this is fairly apparent to anyone who stops to think about their gaming experience for a moment, one might ask why developers even bother with such elaborate disguises. I find the answer rather heartening. I believe that developers have come to realize that, while violence is often a necessary part of the action in many games, most people feel put out at the prospect of ending other peoples’ lives, even digital ones. While there are plenty of games that don’t adhere to the general categories I mentioned, most do. It’s the action and excitement of a scenario that draws us in, death is usually just an unintentional byproduct, but even so some effort is made to separate the gamer from what would be the terrible consequences of their actions. Developers do this because we are, despite what so many political blowhards and half-wit news anchors would have us believe, sensitive to violence in the real world.

Dante’s Inferno: A Failure on Two Fronts

2010-01-25T13:12:00.004-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

When I previously wrote about the video game version of Dante’s Inferno, my perspective was colored by the fact that I had not actually played any part of the game, merely watched a few videos, trailers, and developer diaries. While I felt that I could glean the general plot and themes of the game, I had no personal experience on which to base my assumptions. Having played the demo, I believe that I can now speak with a great deal more authority when I say the following: This game is total bullshit.

I’ll elaborate. It becomes abundantly clear within the first few moments of the Dante’s Inferno demo that this game has two major sources of inspiration. The first spoken words are a few lines from the actual literary classic Dante’s Inferno, leading the player to believe that it has something in common with the poem that shares its title. The first moments of combat are almost directly taken from God of War, using the same buttons for the exact same types of attacks used in Sony Santa Monica’s Greek mythology-based epic. Despite drawing on one of the great pieces of literature and one of the modern pinnacles of action gaming, Dante’s Inferno feels clumsy and lifeless. This is because it is a failed adaptation of both of its source materials. It is a disgrace to the poem and a debasement of what made God of War such an excellent game.

Essentially, Dante’s Inferno, the original, is the story of a poet travelling through hell with another poet he admired as a guide, pining for his lost love Beatrice, a pure and holy woman. The game, on the other hand, has Dante as a murderous badass crusader with a bloodstained past, chasing the corrupted Beatrice into the depths of hell to save her from both of their sins. On the way, he kills Death, steals his scythe, and then cuts his way through the demonic hordes, either redeeming them or condemning them to (even more) torment. This entire storyline could have at least been made consistent with the original by removing the façade that the main character was Dante and the romantic interest Beatrice. Why not just place new characters in the hell that Dante envisioned, and avoid the cries of literature snobs everywhere?

But what really surprised me about the game was how completely the developers failed to learn anything from their other major influence, God of War. When Visceral Games was about to release Dead Space, they listed their influences as movies like Alien and Event Horizon, and games like Resident Evil. I thought that sounded like a good list, but remained skeptical until I saw the excellent final product. These seemed like people who knew their way around an adaptation. It was clear, at the time, that they could learn lessons from the video games and entertainment properties that came before. This makes the complete failure of Dante’s Inferno even more striking.

There are some basic mechanics that Dante’s Inferno somehow failed to purloin from its inspiration. The quick-time events, requiring a player to push specific buttons quickly when they flash on screen, made their way into Dante’s Inferno, but they managed to make them considerably less intuitive and fun than they were in God of War. Considering that this is one of the most maligned mechanics of God of War, the fact that they adapted them and made them even worse is incredible. In God of War, the button you are supposed to press appears on the screen, right where the action is taking place. It’s directly in your line of sight, helping you to clearly see what is required of you. In Dante’s Inferno, for some unknown reason, the button is placed at the top of the screen, out of the way of the action. It’s essentially a distraction from the actual action of playing the game, and entirely counter-intuitive. I understand their desire to get the button prompt out of the way of the action, but they should have attempted a solution more like the one seen in the God of War 3 demo, which also moved the button prompt to the edge of the screen, but did so on the edge of the screen that matches the placement of the button on the controller. Instead of having to look at which button is being indicated, you can just press the button on the right hand side if you see a button prompt come up on the right. This may seem a minor difference, but in a hectic action game, little changes make all the difference in the world.

Another small but important departure from God of War is the frequency with which Dante’s Inferno doles out said quick-time events. In God of War, large creatures and bosses often involved quick-time events, but Dante’s Inferno has a quick-time event in place for every single time Dante performs a grab attack on any enemy in the game. Even worse, it layers a slapdash morality system on top of that: Players can choose to redeem or punish the souls of the damned through button presses. If you choose to redeem, and wish to reach the maximum level of redemption, this means that combat will consist mostly of jamming on one button over and over again every time you grab an enemy. This is quick-time overkill, as well as an over-use of the moral choice mechanic. In Dante’s Inferno, every enemy presents the player with a hackneyed, black or white moral choice which adds nothing to the gaming experience and slows down the action considerably.

Most damning of all, combat in Dante’s Inferno feels clumsy and unsatisfying. Dante’s attacks are heavy, inaccurate, and graceless. If there was one priority that Visceral Games should have put above all others while pilfering from God of War, it would be accurately capturing the weight and rhythm of combat. In God of War, combat is fluid and filled with natural patterns of attack and defense. Although Kratos himself is a brute, his combat feels almost dancelike and elegant, with his whirling chains beating out a rhythm of death upon his enemies. Dante, by comparison, seems oafish. His attacks are dull and his timing feels off. His dodges come just a little too slow, and neither Dante nor his enemies understand how to move and signal. If great, satisfying combat is a dance, Dante would step all over his partners’ feet.

But the problems with Dante’s Inferno go well beyond the mechanics of the game. Another thing that Dante’s Inferno should have learned from God of War is the latter’s ability to stay thematically consistent with the mythology it was using. Sure, Kratos wasn’t a character in the Greek myths, and he never slew any gods or fought any of the mythical monsters he fought in the games. But God of War manages to maintain an authenticity of style: Greek mythology is just as bloody, sexual, violent and enormous as the God of War games make it seem. Dante’s Inferno, on the other hand, attempts to use Christian mythology as a source, but treats it as if it’s exactly the same as Greek mythology. Christian mythology can be sexy, certainly (see Song of Solomon if you don’t believe me), but it is not as overtly and graphically sexual as Dante’s Inferno depicts it, with nudity in almost every frame of its opening sequence, and vagina monsters galore in some of its later stages.

Inconsistencies like this are nothing compared to a few elements which display complete ignorance of the religion they are adapting into a video game. There are some glaring problems with the Dante’s Inferno game that anyone who had done an hour of research could have pointed out, the most obvious of which is that the personification of death in Christian mythology is typically an angel, not a malevolent, evil entity (though some specific sects of Christianity differ on this point). Also, as mentioned earlier, the main character is given the power to redeem the souls in hell, which makes Dante Alighieri, the poet turned ham-fisted warrior, more powerful than God from the first moments of the game. What’s going to challenge the warrior who can kill Death and subvert the judgment of the Lord Almighty? How is the player ever meant to suspend their disbelief?

It seems that Visceral Games has truly missed the mark on this one, taking an odd assortment of ideas, stories, and video games, and slopping them together into an incoherent, bloody mess of a product. I hope that the gaming public won’t be fooled into thinking there is a story or a game worth experiencing behind all the blood, guts and breasts. They’ve taken a piece of the most important literature in centuries and some of the most satisfying gameplay in decades, ripped them to shreds, and reassembled them into a sick parody of their former selves. Like it says on the gates of hell: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

Bayonetta Is Neither Feminist nor Relevant

2010-01-21T10:40:00.006-05:00

by Danielle (guest writer)

After watching the demo of Bayonetta, subtitled First Climax, I did not come away with the feminist outrage I half-expected the game would inspire. The game seemed silly, pulling out old tropes about broken commandments and a femme fatale. I mean, the name of the demo is First Climax; it didn't really seem possible to take it seriously.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean the game isn't sexist - and here is where I point out that I have not played the entire game, so I cannot testify to any character development that may occur. Judging from the demo alone, Bayonetta uses her sexuality almost as a literal weapon, which I suppose does set her apart from her forebears. The femme fatale has for the most part been seen as a negative force, using her wiles to undermine the male hero. (The interest in retelling old stories that has soared lately has changed this somewhat; Lilith, after all, has gone from being a demon to being something of a feminist symbol.) In addition to all this, there is a heavy sadism theme in the demo. Bayonetta has "torture attacks," one of which involves an iron maiden and another which has Bayonetta spanking her opponent before guillotining them.

The opening cut scene does nothing in the way of hinting at any personality beyond this, nor does it forward the plot in any real way. It features Bayonetta sashaying down the aisle of a train, into a metro station, and out to a garden. Then you're right back into a crazy action sequence.

Speaking of fighting, I would be remiss if I did not bring up the hair. Bayonetta's hair forms her outfit - which is actually pretty modest, all things considered. Her hair also forms her attacks, though, leaving our poor heroine unclad when she fights except for a strip of hair/clothes down her middle. Another attack creates a monster out of her hair, leaving her nude and covered with a swirl of hair circling around her. It is basically a drawn-out striptease, promising that if the player does well, he'll get to see more. (I say "he" because, let's face it, this is a market advertised to and dominated by men.)

It is easy to say that Bayonetta provides an unrealistic depiction of women, but it's okay because the men are unrealistic too! The problem with this argument is that men are not held up to unrealistic standards presented in video games - or movies, magazines, television, etc. In fact, it's easy to find examples of shlubby dudes who get the attractive lady in the end. Women, however, are held up to these standards. So every example of a woman like Bayonetta - even in a silly video game - is another standard of beauty being imposed.

I get that this sort of game is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. Main character and sexism aside, I'm not super interested in fighting games like this. Honestly, it doesn't seem all that much worse than other games that are out there. If anything, it seems a little sillier. In a time when the video game medium is rapidly maturing and becoming more mainstream, there is no reason to sacrifice character for crazy action sequences. In a mature field, there is simply less and less room for adolescent titles like Bayonetta.

Real Sacrifice

2010-01-19T11:36:00.004-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Fair warning: this post on sacrifice contains fairly major spoilers for Final Fantasy IV.

Final Fantasy IV contains a moment of self-sacrifice that completely shocked me. It was dramatic, emotional, and inspiring, but mostly it impressed because it was such a departure from the typical story of self-sacrifice. Since before the story of Jesus of Nazareth’s death for the sins of the world, personal sacrifice for the sake of others has been a source of fascination and praise for humanity. In modern entertainment, these moments typically take one of two forms:

1. The character is unproven, cowardly, or has caused some harm to befall the other characters previously in the story. By sacrificing themselves to delay the oncoming horde/blow up the reactor/offer their lives to a supernatural force, they redeem themselves in the eyes of the other characters in the story forever.
2. The character is a close friend or ally who lives primarily to see the mission succeed or to protect another character. By giving their lives in service of the mission/friend/lover, they forever show their dedication to that cause/friendship/love.

The latter of these two conditions has greater potential for emotional impact, since the character performing the sacrifice has a presumably deeper connection to the other characters. What both conditions have in common, however, is that after the death of the characters, it is possible to look at their lives and their choices and see how far they’ve come, how they’ve changed as people and what brought them to such a decision. By sacrificing themselves these characters purchase relevance to the story and a morally clean slate with their lives.

Self sacrifice is such an overused theme in entertainment that it has become easy, as a viewer, to accept it when a character throws their life away for the sake of others. We may be sad to see a favorite character go, but we can reconcile ourselves to the idea. In less well-written stories, we may barely be affected at all by such a dramatic moment. I doubt it would surprise many gamers if, in Gears of War 3, Dom has a dramatic moment of self-sacrifice in which he dies to save Marcus Fenix or the world. It’s almost what big, gruff secondary characters are designed to do.

There is a moment in Final Fantasy IV, however, which affected me in a way that I was not prepared for at all. Allow me to set the scene:

When I first met Palom and Porom, I had been washed ashore after a shipwreck. I quickly realized that the nearest town was the same one that I had previously robbed and sacked, and the members of the town did nothing but torment me for my past actions. Attempting to reform my ways, I sought the guidance of a town elder who sent me up a nearby mountain to redeem myself and become a paladin. He sent two young children, twins, both aspiring wizards of considerable talent, to go with me and keep an eye on me.

Palom was a sweet girl, very polite and helpful. She specialized in magic that protects and heals. Porom was impetuous and rude, and loved to brag about his magical skill. Typical for his age, which I estimated at about ten. Together, they helped me through the trials ahead, and even decided to join me on my quest, leaving their hometown behind them.

We were fleeing a castle, and the room we were in was completely sealed. The walls were closing in. And these two impossible children, these young children with their whole lives ahead of them, consciously chose to turn themselves to stone, forever, to hold the walls at bay and allow us to escape. We tried to bring them back, but we couldn’t.

As we fled, we vowed that their sacrifice was not in vain, but I knew that it was my fault. If I’d never stolen from that town in the first place, if I’d never returned, they would still be living their lives in that peaceful little village. Maybe it wouldn’t have been peaceful for long. Maybe if they hadn’t been there to stop those walls, we all would have died and hope for the world would have died with us. Still, it was hard to come to terms with the loss of children so young. Did they really understand the sacrifice they were making? Children understand more than we give them credit for, but could they really grasp how much they were giving up?

Not knowing what was to come, I marched onward to confront the evil responsible, inspired by the bravery and selflessness of two ten-year-old children. Their sacrifice meant something. It was unexpected, and it was dramatic, and it made me think differently about them, about the evil we faced, about my resolve to destroy it, and most of all, about the emotional power that video games have held for years. Final Fantasy IV was first released in 1991. In 2010, playing it for the first time on a little handheld device on a long car ride, it showed me a more dramatic moment of personal sacrifice than most movies and books have ever done. It just goes to show that sometimes all it takes is a little twist on an old cliché to give a story a more profound emotional hook.

Unbewitchered

2010-01-15T11:47:00.006-05:00

by C.T. Hutt

Those readers who have been watching the “Now Playing” section of our site can tell you that I have been hacking away at The Witcher by CD Projekt RED STUDIO for the better part of four months. The Witcher is a top down third person RPG with a unique storyline and an engaging combat system. Further, the voice acting is spot on, the environments are rich, and many of the characters are multi-dimensional. Beyond a regrettably small pallet used for NPCs and a long series of repetitive quests, I have very few complaints about this game, and yet, I’ve been playing this game on and off for four months. I’ve had more than enough time to bring this title to a close, so what’s the problem?

It comes down to this: even the most ardent reader can’t tackle an entire library, and the time we take to appreciate entertainment and the arts is regrettably finite. Simply put, while I want to play The Witcher, there are other games that have seduced my attentions more effectively. This is not to say that they are better games, but simply that they are more relevant to me at present. Even a great consumer of the arts cannot see every picture in the Louvre in a single day.

Accepting this premise, I am forced to examine my own motivations for sidelining this perfectly good title. A connoisseur of any medium must recognize that their interpretations of a given work of art are, ultimately, personal. Hence, while I may fancy myself a worthy and objective analyst of all things video game, faced with an apparent shortfall in my own level of interest in what ought to be an engaging title, I am forced to concede that my failure to finish The Witcher represents a defect in my own character, rather than the game. I think this title has a lot to offer, just not to me.

It is a curious distinction of the human experience that our interests and levels of enthusiasm are often fickle and random, but that does seem to be the state of things. Rather than fight against such bizarre forces in our own nature, I think it is better to embrace the things that we do find personally engaging with a full heart, rather than try to force ourselves to like things just because we think we ought to. It is said that the books we are meant to read choose us; I imagine this is true of video games as well. We can’t beat them all, fellow gamers, the medium has grown too large for that.

Difficulty Needs More Curves

2010-01-13T11:40:00.004-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

“You are dead.”

The familiar words glowed on the screen in front of me as I took a deep breath. It was the twelfth time in a row that I’d been crushed, without mercy, by an unstoppable rock wall. I wanted to go to sleep, but I didn’t want to leave this section unconquered. I was ready to hurl my controller through my television screen. Just to shove my face in it, God of War asked me whether I wanted to lower the difficulty to easy. I considered it, weighing the pros and cons of giving in and losing some of my gamer credibility, when I noticed the caveat. Changing the difficulty would only affect combat.

Well, I wasn’t dying in combat. I mean, that happened from time to time, but mostly I died in the platforming or the speed-based death traps. There was no option for me. I’d just have to try again. And again. And again.

There’s really no excuse for that. For some reason, most platforming games have no difficulty option. And yet, playing God of War, it became clear to me how difficulty changes could be implemented into platforming and puzzle sections of games. Almost every time I died in God of War, it was because of the speed of the challenge: rapidly rotating blades, swiftly approaching walls of stone, or a timer that filled a room with spikes. I just didn't have enough time to think, or run, or jump, or push that block where it needed to go.

The solution is simple: when the player turns the difficulty down to easy, all these elements can just be slowed down. The turning wheel of blades goes more slowly, making it easier to navigate. The walls of stones move in to crush less often. The timer in the spike room takes just a little bit longer before destroying everything present.

Changing the difficulty in video games rarely affects the entire game. Maybe it makes enemies harder to kill, maybe it makes them deal more damage. Occasionally it changes their artificial intelligence. But there are always challenges that go unchanged, whether that be the navigation of a maze or the traversal of a platforming section. Providing a challenge for the players that want one is an admirable goal, but as the audience for video games grows, new solutions are needed to make great games like God of War approachable to new players.

Timing-based platforming is easy to change; slowing down the moving platforms, spinning logs, and falling ceilings will give the player more time to consider their options. Precision platforming and other challenges aren’t as easily changed, but we can’t fix everything at once. With more consideration and innovation, making video games accessible to a larger audience doesn’t require that those games be over-simplified.

Going forward, difficulty changes should, like this timing-based solution, cater to players seeking a challenge as well as less experienced, casual gamers. When everyone walks away with the level of challenge that they want from a game, the result is that video games reach a wider audience without alienating the hardcore. This benefits not only game designers hoping to meet with greater sales numbers, but the medium as a whole. When the same games can provide a satisfying experience to the person who has never played a game before as well as the professional gamer, video games will become a more prominent form of entertainment. Accessibility is a problem that video games do not share with other storytelling media like movies and books. Making video games accessible to anyone will help to make newly released and classic video games just as much a topic of conversation as the worlds of film, television and literature. With simple changes and creative thinking, challenges can be changed to fit any player, opening the world of video games to a wider audience.

The Way We Play

2010-01-11T10:48:00.003-05:00

by C.T. Hutt

The very first console I ever played was my neighbor’s Atari; the controllers for it were little more than simple joysticks with a pause button in the corner. The original NES found its way into my home within the year and came equipped with standard blocky controllers which left my tiny hands stinging with gamers’ arthritis. Even in those days crazy peripherals abounded. The original NES Power glove was almost completely ineffectual, but undeniably cool looking, in an eighties sort of way. Long before the Wii Fit came onto the scene, gamers were sweating bullets in front of their televisions with the Nintendo Power Pad which was little more than a Twister mat attached to a television.

The SNES controller was a similar beast to its predecessor, only there were more buttons and the edges were mercifully rounded. I got so much mileage out of that console that I actually wore out the buttons on several controllers. In hindsight, I should have kept them and had them bronzed; they would be a fine memorial to my gaming tenure.

While Nintendo was my favored console early in my gaming career, many of the other name-brand consoles followed a similar development path. As time wore on, controllers became increasingly complex and ergonomic. Vast improvements in graphics and programming technology, coupled with a growing consumer base, pushed developers to create controllers which offered superior interactivity and choice. Initially, this simply meant adding more buttons, but that was poised to change.

When the Nintendo 64 dropped into the world back in 1996 (yes, it really has been that long), everything changed. 3-D games where no longer a theoretical experiment for developers, almost overnight they had become the standard. The medium had added an entirely new dimension to itself and our controllers had to evolve in turn. Now we needed controls which not only manipulated where our avatars went and what they did but ones which altered our perspective on the action. The N64 Rumble Pac add-on brought an additional connection between the digital world and ours.

The Playstation 2 Dual shock controller lead the way toward the adoption of the now popular double joysick multi-button controller configuration we see in all major consoles. Wireless controls have also become an industry standard, further removing us from the umbilical cords of systems past. Rather than sit inert in our hands, modern controllers, shake and pulse in sync with actions taking place in the game, some have built-in speakers for more immersive sound effects, and peripheral devices of every description litter the shelves of gaming stores.

Never content with the status quo, we now have controllers (notably for the Wii) which react to body movement rather than merely the manipulation of levers and buttons. Sony is developing similar controls for the PS3 and Microsoft has been creating a great deal of press surrounding project Natal, a devise which removes hand held controls entirely and tracks our body movements instead. The market for video games has never been larger and the developers and distributors of controllers are surging forward to capture our attention with their next great innovations. Responding to the ever growing desire for greater interactivity, they are creating systems that will allow us to control digital worlds with our very bodies and minds, and all of this progress has happened in less than thirty years. Just imagine what kinds of controllers we will be using thirty years in the future.

Nintendo Should Stop Innovating

2010-01-08T14:09:00.003-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Of all the Nintendo franchises, Zelda has always been my favorite. The blend of action, puzzle-solving, and exploration has a special place in my heart. I’ve played a Zelda game on every console since the Super Nintendo, but I haven’t touched either of the exceedingly well-reviewed games for the Nintendo DS. It’s not that the games don’t look fun to me. I’m just trying to avoid public embarrassment.

You see, one of the mechanics that The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks have in common is that they require the player to blow into the DS microphone to accomplish certain goals. As an avid home console gamer, I use my DS almost exclusively on the bus and metro, surrounded by people I don’t know. While I may be willing to embarrass myself by flailing around in my living room with friends and loved ones present, my tolerance for doing weird things on a crowded bus is much, much lower. What would people think? Maybe if I just did it once, someone would assume I was blowing some stray dust off of the screen. More sustained blowing, however, makes the blower look steadily more insane.

There was an attack in The World Ends with You that required shouting into the DS microphone. I have no idea how useful it was, because I never used it. I’ve seen people who shout on the bus. Those people are avoided and occasionally asked to leave. In one puzzle in Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, the solution required blowing into the DS microphone. I remember looking around, furtively, and then trying to quickly move my stylus across the microphone to mimic a blowing sound. It took a long time, but eventually worked. Of course the result was me furiously rubbing a tiny hole on my DS, which may be just as humiliating.

And Nintendo just can’t stop there. As if the microphone wasn’t enough, the DSi introduces a camera function. A few games have been announced which will allow the player to take pictures of their surroundings and use them in game. So now I’m meant to photograph strangers? This begs the question of whether I should do so openly, and hope that they take me as harmless, or be more secretive and risk looking more like a pervert. Either way, restraining orders seem likely.

A recent news post explains that Nintendo’s next generation of handhelds will use motion controls. It’s a little vague on the details: maybe you’ll flail the device itself around, threatening to strike innocent commuters, or perhaps the gesticulating will be done at the device, and it will register your movements with a camera, while others register your movements as dementia.

Slow down, Nintendo! Finding new ways to interact with video games is exciting, but the purpose of the device should be kept in mind. Handheld consoles are meant to be portable and playable in public. We already have wireless ear pieces to make us look crazy; there’s really no need to have us shouting, waving our arms around, taking photographs of people nearby, and then blowing desperately at our little screens. I’m all for pushing the boundaries of interactivity, but a modicum of common sense goes a long way. A handheld that’s too embarrassing to take out of your home loses a lot of its appeal.

The Front Lines of the Censorship War

2010-01-06T14:01:00.003-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

In 2005, Rockstar Games was riddled with controversy over the “Hot Coffee” mini-game, in which the main character from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas engaged in non-nude sexual intercourse with his in-game girlfriend. The mini-game wasn’t even directly accessible in the normal version of the game, requiring various hacking tools to play the controversial content.

Despite the fact that this scene was unintentionally left in the source code and not meant to be played, the controversy yielded a change in the rating of the game from “Mature” to “Adults Only,” which resulted in the title being pulled from store shelves until an updated version could be released. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was already an explicitly violent game, but this one tame, hidden sex scene provoked several lawsuits, which collectively resulted in enormous financial costs for Rockstar Games. On the other hand, the public nature of the controversy may have bolstered sales.

In 2009, The Ballad of Gay Tony was released as an add-on for Grand Theft Auto IV, and during the regular course of the game, characters have sex and perform fellatio on screen (their clothes and camera angles conceal any nudity). The previous add-on, The Lost and the Damned, included full frontal male nudity. Grand Theft Auto IV and its expansions also contain the usual high levels of violence and profanity which have become a trademark for the series. As of the time of this writing, no lawsuits or major controversies have resulted from any of this material.

I have mixed feelings about the sort of world that Grand Theft Auto presents: at best, the protagonists are murderers and thieves who care only about themselves and a handful of friends or relatives. They have some vague moral compass but they barely adhere to it. The peripheral characters are considerably more abominable: drug addicts, racists, misogynists and homophobes. To the credit of Rockstar Games, these characters are depicted in an appropriately negative light, but the social merits of the series are certainly questionable.

Harder to question, however, is the progress that the Grand Theft Auto games have made to loosen the vice grip of censorship. Material that once would have been kept from store shelves now has a place in the market due to Rockstar’s constant pushing of boundaries. Though the games themselves may be exaggerated and crass and their attempts at satire heavy handed, they have opened doors to allow other companies to make mature games that use sex, profanity, violence, and nudity in less gratuitous ways. Rockstar Games is on the front line of the censorship war, and while they may not wage that war the way I would, I’m glad that they’re clearing a way for the mature games of the future.

Defending the Re-release

2010-01-04T13:28:00.011-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

There’s a long list of games that came out in 2009 that weren’t considered for any game of the year awards: God of War, Final Fantasy VII, and Metroid Prime among them. They’re all fantastic games, and deserving of praise, but this year wasn’t their first on store shelves. Instead of the hot new release, these games were resurrected for new consoles, offering a glimpse into video game history.

The re-release is often disparaged as a shameless cash-in on a publisher’s back catalog, but releases like God of War Collection and Metroid Prime Trilogy are more than mere products of greed. Video game re-releases allow gamers to experience the history of video games without buying older consoles or hunting down rare cartridges. At their best, a re-release offers more than the original did, whether that be updated graphics and gameplay or insight into the development of the game. Perhaps in the future, this will become something akin to the Criterion Collection for film: definitive remasters of classic games, prized for their quality and reverence to the source material.

The other appeal of re-releasing older games is giving a whole new audience a chance to experience them. As someone who only recently became invested in console gaming, this can be a very powerful motivator.

I never owned a Playstation 2, one of the most popular consoles of all time. I played some of the games, but always at a friend’s house. I held out on the Playstation 3 for a long time as well, but it wasn’t Metal Gear Solid 4, Killzone 2, or Uncharted 2: Among Thieves that finally got me to buy the system. I considered the Playstation 3 useless after backwards compatibility was removed. It was the announcement of the God of War Collection that changed my mind. Finding out that I could play these missed games told me that Sony had something resembling a plan to deliver that fantastic Playstation 2 content. Don’t get me wrong, the other games were appealing, but God of War Collection gave me hope that I would one day be able to play Shadow of the Colossus for less than a hundred dollars and an extra black box under my television.

I would consider my Xbox 360 considerably less valuable if I couldn’t play Jade Empire or Psychonauts on it, and the fact that I can play Super Metroid, Earthworm Jim and Beyond Good and Evil on the Nintendo Wii doubles the amount of time I spend with the supposedly casual device. This generation of consoles has been the first to really, thoroughly embrace the history of video games as much as their future. I think that Square Enix should probably be focusing more of their efforts on new games than they are on bringing every Final Fantasy ever made to the Nintendo DS, but I don’t mind companies taking some time to make fantastic old games available to us. And I still want that Playstation 3 re-make of Final Fantasy VII while we’re at it.

It hit me while I was playing God of War, marveling at some of the great design decisions and the intricate, incredible dungeon of the Temple of Pandora. It was new and familiar at the same time, and I could see how it spawned a whole category of action games at the same time as it drew on Zelda to create one of the most complicated dungeons I'd ever seen. I wondered how it was that I’d never played it before, and gloried in the fact that I finally could. God of War is a piece of video game history now, and while it may not be a long history, there are plenty of games worth revisiting.

Level Complete: 2009

2009-12-22T10:13:00.003-05:00

Video games, whatever they may mean to you, are now a part of our shared heritage. At Press Pause to Reflect, we have strived to explore their value as such and come to a fuller understanding of our own, often confusing, culture. Bringing this blog to you for the past year has been a fantastic experience and 2010 looks even brighter. We couldn’t have done it without you, dear readers. Your comments and attention have kept us moving. We’d also like to thank the developers who took the time to talk with us about their experiences breaking ground in the medium. Keep up the good work, we will be watching with great expectation. And a big thanks to the welcoming world of video game bloggers. You’ve all been very friendly, helpful, and we’re grateful for every word and link. Please accept our warmest holiday wishes and best hopes for the new year.

Before we go on vacation, we’ve put together a little compilation of our favorite pieces from our first year as a blog. We hope you’ll look around, and that we’ll see you again in 2010.

Our Purpose

Playing with Art, by Daniel Bullard-Bates, and Josh Raisher’s follow-up serve as something like a thesis statement for Press Pause to Reflect, discussing the special merits of the video game medium.

Nostalgia

C.T. Hutt did some lovely pieces on the death of the arcade, difficulty levels in older video games, and just how much video game swordplay means to him.

Notions

Daniel offered some guidelines on how to extend game play without ruining the game and proposed an idea for a permanent-death horror game.

Complaints

Josh bemoaned the lack of permanence in video game death, C.T. complained about how abysmal the writing was in Gears of War, and Daniel whined that games are too in love with realism.

Praise

C.T. lauded environmental design in video games, Daniel got excited about writers doing a better job of injecting humor into games, and Josh exhibited an unhealthy obsession with Chrono Trigger.

Interviews

Tale of Tales, Jonathan Blow, and Jason Rohrer were all kind enough to answer our questions.

The 2009 Select [Button]: Game of the Year

2009-12-18T11:38:00.004-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Game of the Year: Flower

In a year riddled with sequels and familiar, derivative material, Flower stands apart. This is a game that is more meditative than action-packed, and one that rewards a slow, patient approach. Instead of a space marine or a wise-cracking adventurer, the player takes the part of the wind, blowing petals from place to place. Besides originality in concept, Flower accomplishes something few games even attempt: it contains relevant social and political themes. Flower is presented with confidence and gravitas, delivering a message of change without a single word of dialogue. Remarkably, this message has the power to affect both the video game industry and the advancement of alternative energy.

Even the tone of the game speaks volumes for its creativity. It is at times exciting, but there is a quiet revolution here as well: the majority of the game is soothing. There are moments of adversity and triumph, but mostly there is just the peaceful exploration and transformation of wide expanses of land. In Flower, the world becomes more beautiful as you progress. Instead of leaving corpses in your wake, you leave blooming flowers and bright swathes of color.

Beyond Flower’s groundbreaking originality, it is spectacularly well-executed. The visuals are gorgeous, presenting one of the most colorful and dramatic landscapes of any game this year. The physics of the wind, carrying the many-colored petals and parting the grass beneath, help to deliver a sense of reality and immediacy to the game play. The world of Flower is transformed by the player, using the simple, proficient tilting of the controller, into a canvas of color and life. This is painting as performed by nature itself, placed in the palms of your hands.

Somehow, thatgamecompany has managed to create something fresh, beautiful and unique and get it right on their first try. There is not a single moment or mechanic out of place, the game never becomes dull or laborious, and the result is sublime. Other games accomplished a great deal this year: Uncharted 2, for example, took an idea that has been tried a hundred times and refined it until it shone. But what makes Flower the best game of the year is that it took an idea that was completely new, delivered on every possibility, and created something beautiful, simple, socially-relevant, and engaging. Flower is interactive art. And it feels so good.

The 2009 Select [Button]: Idea/Execution

2009-12-17T10:25:00.007-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Best Idea without Execution: Scribblenauts

Scribblenauts is great for the first couple of hours. You can type in almost anything you can imagine, and a representation of that object will appear on the screen for you to interact with. The number of words that the in-game dictionary recognizes is stunning. Unfortunately, playing around with the dictionary may be the only really fun part of the game. Past the first few levels, the seams begin to show and then quickly unravel. The movement of your avatar is tied to the Nintendo DS stylus, causing him to throw himself into spikes just as often as selecting a usable item. This gets frustrating quickly, and could have easily been solved by using the DS buttons for movement.

Solving puzzles using all the items available to you should lead to a lot of eureka moments, but the objects interact in very limited ways. In one puzzle, when I was trying to move a cow so some cars could get by, I had the brilliant idea of using a shrink ray to shrink the cow, and then hiding it in a briefcase so that a nearby butcher wouldn’t see him. Unfortunately, the tiny cow wouldn’t go in the briefcase. (What? That was a reasonable solution.) Most puzzles ended up boiling down to just attaching something to a rope and a helicopter and moving it somewhere else. It’s disappointing that a game with one great mechanic failed to deliver a great game to surround it.

Best Execution without Ideas: Borderlands

Borderlands comes from the Voltron school of game design: take several winning ideas from other games and properties, combine them into one unstoppable game/robot, and then publish. It is essentially the setting of Firefly or Mad Max with the regenerating shield of Halo, the shooting mechanics of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the leveling and random loot system of Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft. The only thing that sets the game apart is that no one has ever made a combination quite like that before. Despite the lack of originality, those elements combine to make a fun, addictive experience that we can’t seem to shut up about.

The 2009 Select [Button]: Single-Player/Multi-Player

2009-12-16T16:12:00.008-05:00

by C.T. Hutt

Most Engrossing Single-Player: Dragon Age: Origins

Despite a plethora of high quality single-player experiences that have come out this year, Dragon Age: Origins reigns supreme. Single-player RPGs are designed to create the optimum mano-a-computer gaming experience, often without an online play aspect or offline cooperative modes, so it’s really no surprise that a title which has been crowned by many sources as the best RPG of the year also makes for the most engrossing single-player experience.

Stunning graphics, complex, strategic game play, and the engaging storyline offered by Dragon Age: Origins combine to keep any gamer with a taste for tactical combat and fantasy glued to their office chair for days. An outstanding single-player experience is not without its dangers of course. Side effects of Dragon Age: Origins may include: vitamin D deficiency, reduced social interaction, loss of sleep, carpel tunnel, poor diet, and delusions of being a Grey Warden. Other than those minor problems, we recommend Dragon Age: Origins to any gamer out there who wants to fly solo.

Honorable Mention: Batman: Arkham Asylum afforded gamers with an experience they have been anticipating for a very long time: a great game based on a comic book character. In some places Batman: Arkham Asylum went a little overboard (i.e.: chemical mega-joker), but it was still a fantastic title.

Most Engrossing Multi-Player: Left 4 Dead 2

Zombies. They stink, they try to kill you, and they drag down property value in a major way. As a responsible citizen and home owner it is your duty and your pleasure to shoot them in the head. But many hands make for light work, so while you are busy clearing the zombie infested streets of New Orleans from the undead, make sure to bring a buddy along. Left 4 Dead 2 brings home the awesomeness of a great horror/ survival FPS and an excellent co-operative game play experience. Nothing says “we are having some fun now” more than pounding your buddy on the back yelling “Shoot the the jockey! Shoot the jockey!” before you get pulled into a puddle of acidic spitter mucus. Toss in some excellent environments and a dash of poignant social commentary and you’ve got a title we will be playing for months to come.

Honorable Mention: Borderlands. Wait, what? Didn’t you just say you hated that game? Not entirely. The setting, storyline, repetitive missions, character balance, and soundtrack of Borderlands all leave a lot to be desired, but the co-operative play is really quite good. Borderlands is proof positive that almost anything can be fun if you bring some friends along for the ride.

The 2009 Select [Button]: Ambiance

2009-12-15T10:11:00.007-05:00

by C.T. Hutt

Best Ambiance: The Path

Tale of Tales has been the little game developer that could this year. They have turned the collective heads of the gaming community with their original titles and unique approach to the gaming medium. I haven’t had a chance to play Fatale, but if their past performance is any indicator of quality I am sure it will be a knock out.

The Path, released last March, is not what many gamers have come to expect from an exploration game. There are no traditional puzzles to solve in this game and no enemies to fight, but The Path manages to establish genuine emotional resonance with the player utilizing graphics tricks many would consider outdated. Ambiance in The Path is created by changes in camera angle, well-placed music and sound effects, and alterations in lighting.

There were few action-oriented components to The Path, which made the title a non-starter for many gamers. It was a game that focused on one central mechanic, our feelings about a given scenario, and didn’t let up. In many titles, ambiance and setting are obstacles developers work to overcome so they can get back into the action. In The Path, Tale of Tales made ambiance the whole point, and it worked.

Honorable Mentions: Flower and the Hard Rain level in Left 4 Dead 2 both had stirring ambiance. Whether eliciting an imprecise, but radiant sense of hope or simply evoking animal terror these titles used environment, sound, and music effects to their utmost.

Worst Ambiance: Borderlands

Following a compass needle through a vast junkyard in the middle of a desert, this is the Borderlands experience. I don’t have much to say about this title that hasn’t already been said. The action mechanics were spot on, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to feel anything but mild amusement from this game. They didn’t even get the feeling of desolation to ring through; in a game called Borderlands that seems like a necessity.

The 2009 Select [Button]: Improvement

2009-12-14T10:44:00.005-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Most Improved: Assassin’s Creed 2

Assassin’s Creed had a lot going for it: a conflict set in the middle east during the crusades, beautiful graphics and exciting assassination missions, but the game was bogged down by repetition and strange design choices. Fortunately, the developers at Ubisoft took almost every piece of criticism from the first game and worked it into the sequel. The mission structure became more varied, the settings became even more colorful, the main character learned how to swim, the player’s skills increased along with the character’s, and so on. Basically, everything Assassin’s Creed did, Assassin’s Creed 2 did better. The sequel still had a few problems (the free running system doesn’t always perform as desired and some of the mission types are still a drag), but the Assassin’s Creed series went from being a decently fun game with an interesting historical setting to a unique, exciting franchise in just a few years.

Honorable Mentions: Left 4 Dead 2 and Uncharted 2 both improved substantially when compared to their predecessors, but the first games in each series were already solid, so the change was not nearly so dramatic.

Least Improved: Overlord 2

Seeing the progress made between Overlord and Overlord 2 was exciting at first. They improved the camera, gave the player more comprehensive control over their minions, and changed the morality system so that it encompassed two different kinds of evil, while the first one had a black and white morality. In the first game, I chose between giving the villagers food and keeping the food for myself. In the second, my options were killing all the villagers or bending their wills to my service. They even maintained the dark sense of humor from the original, which is a large part of what makes the series fun. Unfortunately, for every problem they fixed a new one popped up (just like playing whack-a-minion). While control of the minions was improved, the minions themselves seemed more idiotic and less likely to notice and interact with objects and enemies. The camera and the control mechanism were tied together, which resulted in the main character never looking where he needed to, resulting in irritating deaths and confusion. The morality system required the player to hunt down hundreds of individuals with no way to track them, which quickly became too cumbersome to be worth it, and the magic system was drastically over-complicated. I have a soft spot for both games, but Overlord 2 managed to make a mess just as often as it cleaned one up, resulting in a mediocre sequel to a mediocre game.

The 2009 Select [Button]

2009-12-11T14:17:00.003-05:00

Well, dear readers, 2009 is drawing to a close. Like every other blog on the net, we at Press Pause to Reflect can’t resist the siren call of posting about the best games of the past year. Granted, we don’t assign games a numerical score, color code, pass/fail rating, percentage, or grading metric of any kind, but we know what we like. Starting Monday, every day we will be sharing our picks in various categories for the most interesting or significant games of the year.

Don’t agree with our assessments? Tell us all about it in the discussion section.

Left 4 Dead 2: Left Deader

2009-12-09T15:03:00.005-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

When Valve announced that Left 4 Dead 2 was coming within a year of the release of Left 4 Dead, I felt cheated and confused. Not only is that a quick turnaround time for any franchise, this is Valve we’re talking about: these are the same people who decided to do episodic content to make their Half-Life 2 releases come more quickly, and we’re still waiting for Episode 3, over two years after the last release in the series. This is a company known for taking their time to make sure the quality is up to their incredibly high reputation. Many people complained that Left 4 Dead 2 should be an expansion pack, and not a standalone game. But Left 4 Dead 2 doesn’t seem like an expansion pack at all. In fact, it makes the original look like a beta test.

Personally, I don’t imagine I’ll go back to the original Left 4 Dead after playing the sequel. Some of these additions are so obvious that they feel like they should have been in the first title: after the first time you run out of ammunition and switch to your samurai sword or fireman’s axe to fend off the zombie hordes, you’ll always want to have a melee weapon in hand. In Left 4 Dead, you would have been stuck with a pistol. The new massive zombie attack events that require you to run through an area to reach a goal are considerably more frantic and exciting than the numerous stand-in-place sections of the original. The AI director, which determines how many zombies attack and what types (and now even how parts of the levels are laid out), has been improved to the point that every safe house feels like it was hard won. This is surviving a zombie apocalypse done right. They even included an option called “Realism” mode, which removes some of the less immersive qualities of the game, like the outlines that appear to draw your attention to guns, ammunition, and your allies if they aren’t in your line of sight.

There are very few things to complain about. There is this incredibly irritating beeping noise which occurs whenever the game has some information it wishes to relay to you. I couldn’t find a way to shut this off on the Xbox 360 version. The only other concern I have is one of tone.

The first three levels of the game take place in very campy horror situations. The first is based around a mall, the second an amusement park, and the third a swamp. This makes for some fantastic set pieces and level design, but it feels out of sync with the last two scenarios, which both focus on much more relevant, socially significant settings. In “Hard Rain,” the players are in a rural town near New Orleans, walking through ruined streets and scavenging the contents of broken down homes. As the level progresses, the torrential rain becomes just as much an obstacle to progress as the zombies themselves. The streets become flooded, often blocking the means of escape. This leads directly into the final level, “The Parish,” where the survivors make it to New Orleans itself, where in the wake of devastating tragedy, a governmental organization (“CEDA”) is bombing the streets instead of working to rescue survivors. The early levels of Left 4 Dead 2 are a lot of fun, but “Hard Rain” and “The Parish” manage something considerably more impressive: they imbue a frantic action game with social relevance. They have something to say.

I wrote some time ago about how unrealistic and un-modern Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was, but this lack of social significance has not stopped the sequel from becoming the highest grossing entertainment launch of all time. It’s a strange day indeed when a zombie survival game brings more realism and relevance to the table than a series about supposedly realistic war.

The Cutting Room Floor

2009-12-03T14:18:00.003-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

With the advent of the DVD, it has become common practice to include deleted scenes with a movie. It is usually easy to determine why they were cut, whether it was due to the dialogue falling flat, problems with pacing, or simply because it was unnecessary to the plot or character development of the movie. Though it can be painful to amputate a scene that took a lot of hard work, the best directors know when to leave something on the cutting room floor.

It seems to be much more difficult for game designers to let go. Very few video games have no unnecessary sections, missions, or side quests. As Mitch Krpata points out in this post on Uncharted 2, part of what makes that game so fantastic is that there is so little fluff. But Uncharted 2 is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to game design.

Role-playing games provide some of the most blatant examples of unnecessary and unwarranted material. Often this superfluous content comes in the form of time-absorbing side quests. I understand the mentality that might bring a designer to include a few dull side quests: they’re entirely optional, so only the completionist will actively pursue all of them. I was once a completionist when it came to role-playing games, but pointless, hollow side quests have driven me to be considerably less thorough. Just because someone wants to experience everything a game has to offer does not mean that process should be completely mind-numbing.

There is one side quest in Dragon Age: Origins that asked me to collect twenty of a specific kind of mushroom. Here I am, trying to save the country and perhaps the world from an encroaching army of pure evil, and someone wants me to take some time off to practice amateur mycology. Even if this sounded like a fun pastime for my character, giving these mushrooms away for gold is completely counterintuitive to my character’s goals. These same mushrooms can be used to make useful potions to help in my battles against that evil army I mentioned. In other words, the task is boring and the goal is stupid. You get experience points for it, but how do I justify that to my party members? “I’m sorry you’re dying horribly because I traded in all those supplies, but I really wanted that next level up.” Most of the quests in Dragon Age can be completed on the way to more significant tasks or offer more substantial incentives for their completion, but a few should have been cut. Optional or not, boring gameplay is boring gameplay. I’m reminded of the uncharted worlds in Mass Effect.

Borderlands is a refreshingly straightforward game, in that it makes no effort to delude the player into thinking that there is some higher purpose to their actions. The goals are to find more loot and reach the next level, but this dull premise is redeemed by addictive gameplay and a fun co-operative element. This makes it easier to justify embarking on inane optional missions, since there’s no looming threat to make one hurry. Even so, some of the missions presented in the game are ridiculous even for a lowly mercenary. Shooting fecal matter off of a giant turbine does not make me feel cool. Collecting used smut magazines out of dumpsters is not an enjoyable way to spend my time. I don’t begrudge a game the opportunity to have a laugh, but joke missions should be brief so the joke doesn’t overstay its welcome. By the time I’ve trekked halfway across the map to find my third porn dumpster, I am no longer laughing. I am wondering why this made it into the game.

These are minor sins, since they can be safely ignored without detracting from the game experience. What’s even worse is when a game has required sections that are dull or counterintuitive to the game’s goals. In Assassin’s Creed 2, at several points the player is asked to tail someone, keeping an eye on them from a distance while they lead the player to a specific place. Get too close, and they will notice you, lag too far behind and you will lose track of them. This would be simply boring if they didn’t throw in multiple obstacles to your success. Guards along your path might recognize you, requiring you to blend with crowds or hire groups to distract them. This means that you spend large sections of gameplay just walking along watching someone else walk along, and if you don’t do just the right thing, you are noticed, which causes you to fail and start over. Suddenly they’re not just boring, they’re boring and irritating.

Sometimes, important plot information is being relayed by the people you are following. I appreciate the fact that these sections could be seen as a break from the running and jumping and killing, and it’s even a clever way to relay plot information without taking control from the player. But if those are the goals, why not remove some of the complications? Be more lax about the distances; remove the unnecessary barriers to completion. These are not difficult missions, so let them just be breaks from the action. I find it hard to believe that no play tester for Assassin’s Creed 2 turned to a designer and said, “This part is not fun.”

There are lessons to be learned from the cinema. If something isn’t working or doesn’t help a movie, a good director will cut it or edit it until it works. Most video games, even excellent ones, have sections that should have been left on the cutting room floor. Maybe they just need harsher editors.

Tick Tock

2009-12-01T15:45:00.006-05:00

By C.T. Hutt

Bowser, King of the Koopas, likes to think that he is the most dangerous thing in the entire mushroom kingdom. He controls legions of baddies, reigns over the land in a castle of darkness and fire, and can kidnap a princess with the wave of a claw. But for all his bluster, Bowser is a lightweight in comparison to the deadliest device Mario ever faced: the ticking clock.

I remember the very first time I played Super Mario Brothers I was so enchanted by being able to control my little avatar on the screen that I didn’t pay attention to the time. After my 399 seconds had elapsed, Mario suddenly died. When I asked my mother why, she calmly informed me that after the time ran out the bad guy used evil magic to suck all the oxygen out of the air causing Mario to suffocate. This made just about as much sense as everything else in Super Mario Brothers, so I simply accepted it and moved on. It was only recently that I gave the ticking clock a second thought.

Super Mario Brothers was hardly the only title to feature this fiendish device. In most cases the clock’s presence required no explanation; finish before the time runs out or you die. For example, the developers of the infamous Contra included one; presumably they felt that their game was too easy without one. In some cases players were furnished with at least a thin rationale for the ticking clock’s presence. In the original Prince of Persia, the evil Vizier Jaffar gives the princess one hour to marry him or be killed, thus giving players an incentive to haul ass.

For the most part an actual clock counting away the seconds between life and death has disappeared from games. Occasionally one will show up letting you know how long you have to escape the collapsing tower or save the hostages or whatever else, but only rarely. The ticking clock’s time has run out, we no longer need it to encourage us to progress forward. The new ticking clock is danger. If you decide to rest on your laurels while playing Left 4 Dead 2, it won’t take long until an army of irate zombies shows up to encourage you to move on. If you hesitate before jumping off of a burning truck in Uncharted 2, it goes careening over a cliff and you end up like Wile E. Coyote.

As we move closer to the brass ring of realism with improvements in graphics and game play, I imagine we will see more and more peripheral data like the ticking clock, the life bar, the ammunition counter, and eventually all start screens and menus disappear. Such evolutions require less and less imagination and justification on the part of the gamer (no more anti-oxygen spells etc.) and improve our overall immersion in the gaming experience. There is a lot that modern developers can learn by looking back at video games of yore, but there are some shortcuts that early developers had to use which are no longer necessary for the gaming experience. The ticking clock is a thing of the past, and it’s only a matter of time until all the other peripheral distractions fade away and nothing stands between us and our adventures.

Real Moral Choice

2009-11-25T10:25:00.005-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Moral choices, when present in video games, seem to mostly boil down to either saintly behavior or satanic cruelty. Will I save the little sisters from their cruel bonds, or will I tear them into pieces for my own purposes (BioShock)? Should I give the woman her baby for free or threaten its life so she’ll fork over a few gold coins (Neverwinter Nights)? Do I want to end up with a halo or some really gnarly horns (Fable 2)?

I’ve only played about two hours of Dragon Age: Origins, just enough to get through one of the origin stories the game offers, but in that limited amount of time I was presented with the first real moral challenge I have ever faced in a video game. I was a young female elven rogue whose wedding day was ruined by a cruel human noble interposing himself on our modest ceremony. Elves in the world of Dragon Age were, in recent history, an enslaved people. Since we’re still treated as second-class citizens, no one raised much of an outcry when a group of armed men broke up my wedding day and took me and several other women hostage.

With the help of a childhood friend, I broke out, killing the human guards who got in my way. I managed to rescue most of my friends before anything terrible happened to them, but one of the women and my husband-to-be were killed. When I finally reached the so-called noble, he and a group of his men were standing over the sobbing form of one of my closest friends. I gripped my sword in mute fury as the man turned to face me. And that’s when I reached a moment, purely in dialogue, that was more difficult than any series of jumps or room full of well-armed enemies in other games.

The man presented me with a choice: I could fight him, and maybe I would win, but if I killed him his father would probably storm the slum where I lived, killing most of the people I grew up with and burning their homes to the ground. Or I could just walk away, a little richer, and pretend that these atrocities never took place.

I’m not sure I’ve ever taken a longer time to make a dialogue decision. There was no right answer, no clear moral solution. I wanted to do the right thing, but I had no idea what that was.

I told him I would walk away if he let the women go. He refused, saying that he would still be keeping them for the night, all of them but me. That’s when I stabbed him in the gut. It felt good, but I had no idea whether I had done the right thing. I might have doomed us all. Only time would tell.

And that moment, with all of the actual, real-life internal conflict that it elicited from me, was one of the most impressive video game moments of my life. I haven’t played much more of Dragon Age since then, but if that’s all I get out of it I will consider this game an important milestone in video games: a game that finally establishes that morality is not a simple thing, with one good answer and one evil one. Finally, I was asked to make a decision and I had no idea what to do. This shows that games are finally maturing, and that difficulty is no longer just a question of game mechanics. This was challenging to my conscience instead of my reflexes, just like any real, difficult moral choice.

There’s a Time and a Place

2009-11-23T15:31:00.002-05:00

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

Most video games are set in one of a few familiar time periods: World War 2, the present day, or the future (usually either of the dystopian or war-torn variety). Many fantasy games are set in what is essentially a mythologized version of medieval Europe or Japan. Very few games step outside these established temporal settings.

This is part of what makes Assassin’s Creed 2 such a breath of fresh air. The title is set in Renaissance-era Italy, complete with some of the most famous landmarks and figures that inhabited it. I spent this weekend climbing to the top of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore and chatting it up with Leonardo da Vinci. There is enough accuracy and detail worked into the game to reach that holy grail of narrative video games: suspension of disbelief. The original Assassin’s Creed was a less polished game, but the strength of the setting was not among its faults. Having seen Ubisoft’s recreations of 12th Century Jerusalem and 15th Century Florence, I can’t wait to see where, and perhaps more importantly when, the Assassin’s Creed games will go next.

Even in games that have very little basis in reality, a change in temporal setting can add a great deal to the experience. Think of the visual style of BioShock: if it hadn’t been set in 1960, the art deco aesthetic and old-fashioned clothing on the splicers might never have been, the songs on the jukebox would have been completely different, and the atmosphere of the game just wouldn’t have felt so fresh. Breaking apart from the typical medieval European fantasy setting, Jade Empire managed to present a unique role-playing game by placing the player in a mythological version of ancient China. It’s no coincidence that the settings of these games are all so well praised. In an industry replete with cookie-cutter worlds, a simple shift in time and place can yield scores of new ideas and experiences.

Think of all the untapped potential on maps and in history books. When will we see a role-playing game based on Egyptian mythology? A western-style shooter in late 19th Century Australia? How about a survival horror game in a factory town in the American Midwest during the Great Depression? Why do we keep revisiting the same times and places, when there is so much more to see and do?

Falling off the Dragon

2009-11-20T15:19:00.004-05:00

by C.T. Hutt

Oh my god! Is it Friday?

Crap, I think it really is. That would explain why I am at work at least. I don’t understand, what the hell happened? The last thing I remember it was Saturday morning, I was at a Best Buy purchasing a copy of Dragon Age: Origins, but then it’s all a blank. What happened to my week? Why haven’t I shaved? Man, my joints ache like I’ve spent days sitting in an office chair. I’m exhausted, when was the last time I got a full night’s rest? The last time I remember feeling like this was in the middle of my World of Warcraft addiction back in college. This can only mean one thing. I must have had a relapse.

Wait, now I remember. I’ve spent the last week enthralled in Bioware’s latest time vacuum. Oh god, I thought I was past this. Can I really be blamed though? The game play for this title is magnificent, it’s challenging and varied. Success requires tactical considerations and careful planning. The characters are compelling and the voice acting is flawless. And there is a plot, an honest to god plot that I actually find engrossing. Presented with a game that involves a story arc and character development, can I really be blamed for a little slip? Who’s got a problem? You’ve got a problem. Don’t judge me!

Who doesn’t enjoy a good fantasy RPG? You remember Baldur’s Gate right? Dragon Age manages to combine writing in the tradition of Baldur’s Gate with the same playability that has made WoW an international hit. Ask the other bloggers, I am not the only one who thinks so, the net is littered with praise for this title. The familiar landscapes in the game fall a little short for me, but nothing is perfect. See, you see that? I found some fault in the game; I’ve totally got this under control.

Now if you will excuse me, it is Friday afternoon and I need to go home, to uh, walk my cat, I mean brush my plants, no wait I need to water the cats. Yeah, that’s it…